A directed broadcast is an IP packet whose destination address is the broadcast address of a network or subnet. A directed broadcast causes every host on the network to respond. You can use directed broadcasts to obtain a list of all active hosts on the network. A hostile user can exploit directed broadcasts to launch a denial-of-service attack on the network. For each interface on the Branch Gateway, you can configure whether the Branch Gateway forwards directed broadcast packets to the network address or subnet mask address of the interface.