This use case, illustrated in Figure 14, could be applied to an AutomationComponent (AC_A) communicating with multiple AutomationComponents (AC_B and AC_C). To minimize network bandwidth usage in specific topologies, AC_A may aggregate published data into a single NetworkMessage, which is sent via multicast to the associated AutomationComponents AC_B and AC_C. In turn, AC_B and AC_C publish an individual NetworkMessage back to AC_A. Multicast can also help with scaling issues in the device (less processing of network messages is required).

Figure 14 – Multiple Connections using multicast network messages