Feature request - option to use Broadcast

[netmindz]

In order to around issues with some WiFi routers and how they handle multicast, how hard would it be for your to add the option to send to the network broadcast address instead?

[Victoare]

As the documents suggest I have to send the packets to the specific UDP multicast IP with the configurable port.
What would be the other working scenario?

[netmindz]

Not sure yet if the way that the UDP stack works on the ESP32 will require changes in WLED too on the recieving side.

In theory multicast allows your networking setup to only send the data to the devices that are part of the multicast group. In practice many WiFi routers just send multicast packets as if they are broadcast, rather than using IGMP Snooping.

The issue reported where data stops after a few mins is when the WiFi router thinks there are no active devices so stops transmitting the data over WiFi. Rather than trying to chase exactly which end the bug is it might just be easier to provide the option to send as broadcast - where it's expected that every device receives that data.

Given we are talking about small packets at relatively low interval and only within the LAN away, it's not going to make much on an impact - sending bytes of data out say into your wired network of 1Gb/s when technically only needed on your WiFi is not an issue