Addressability (original) (raw)

Addressability is the ability of a digital device to individually respond to a message sent to many similar devices. Examples include pagers, mobile phones and set-top boxes for pay TV. Computer networks are also addressable, such as via the MAC address on Ethernet network cards, and similar networking protocols like Bluetooth. This allows data to be sent in cases where it is impractical (or impossible, such as with wireless devices) to control exactly where or to which devices the message is physically sent.