Connection list shows Broadcasthost

I have good technical knowledge about the computer, its hardware and networks. I am also aware about the special or the new kind of names that we used in the computer world. But recently I did not understand the one word. What is broadcashost? In our office we have nearly 15 Mac computers which hare connected to our main server. Yesterday I looked into the connection list server. I realized that one of our clients Mac is assigned as broadcasthost. But the other Macs are in sorted in the list according to their IP address. What is meant by broadcasthost here?

As refers to my knowledge the broadcasthost is the just an alternative name of the 255.255.255.255 IP address. If it is correct it is useful for the ping operation. In normal condition if we want ping another computer we normally used the IP address of the remote computer followed by the ping command. The drawback is we cannot ping the entire host at one time. You just have to individually enter the IP address. If there is a broadcasthost then you can ping the entire host at once by entering into it.

If there is client server situation in your location then Broadcasthost point to that the client computer connection has been established or recognized via multicast name resolution. This situation normally happens with mDNS or multicast DNS, Bonojour, Rendezvous names. Most of the times the mDNS names determine to IPv4 addresses. On the other hand, they can resolve to local Ethernet MAC addresses ( IPv4 address). In this situation host is connected to the server's broadcast name and we will see the client Mac or connection as broadcasthost.

The broadcasthost is the name of the IP address. In your connection list on of your client may assigned as broadcasthost. In the connection list normally the First column is for the Login name of the clients and the second column is for their IP address. May be the third column shows Local host. If any of the client connection is established as broadcasthost then you will not able to see the IP address. It displays only as broadcasthost in the IP address column and also in the third column.

If the connection list is showing one of your clients as broadcasthost, then there may be some kind of connection problem between the server and the client. Have you aware about the Bonojur and the IPv4 addresses. As recognizing through you’re your problem it seems to me that it is happening due to negotiation between the server and the client by the use of IPv4 and Bonojour. If my guess is correct I need you to look into this if you have knowledge about mDNS names.