Tip: Identify Whether an IP Address Is a Multicast Address

You may want to know whether an IP address is a multicast address or not in order to make a decision on how to proceed with it. Java supports this with the help of an API called isMulticastAddress().

import java.net.*;

public class MulticastAddress 
{
   public static void main(String args[])
   {
      MulticastAddress multicastAddress = new MulticastAddress();
      multicastAddress.proceed();
   }

   private void proceed() 
   {
      InetAddress addr = null;
      String ipAddress = "224.0.0.5";

      try{
         //You can customize this by passing an argument and check for values in runtime
         addr = InetAddress.getByName(ipAddress);
      }catch(UnknownHostException uhe)
      {
         System.out.println("UnknownHostException: " + uhe);
      }
      
      //This method identifies if the given ipaddress is multicast address or not
      if (addr.isMulticastAddress()) {
         System.out.println(addr + " is multicast address.");
      }
      else
      {
         System.out.println(addr + " is not multicast address.");
      }
   }
}

/*

Expected output:

[root@mypc]# java MulticastAddress
/224.0.0.5 is multicast address.

*/ 

Visit the DevX Tip Bank