There is a big difference, with respect to a switch flooding versus a switch broadcasting.

A broadcast frame has a destination address of all ones.

With a flood, the switch is trying to find the destination host when it doesn't know where it is, so the switch "floods" the frame out all ports ... the destination address remains intact (NOT ALL ONES, like a broadcast).

Only the intended host / receiver will pay attention to the flood, because it contains the destination host's address.

With a broadcast, the frame must be passed up the stack by every host that hears it .. the host may toss it, but it first has to evaluate it.

So, the difference is:

Broadcast: destination all ones

Flood: destination address remains the same / as received.

Good Luck

Scott

I assume you use the term network referring to a LAN or VLAN (which, remember, is best defined as a broadcast domain).

There's no such thing as "flooding a network" but there might be such thing as "flooding" mechanism triggered by the same frame in more than one switch or even in all switches composing a LAN (network as you said).

The term flooding, in networking people acceptation, applies to a L2 switches while the term "broadcast" applies to the LAN in its entirety which is a summum of L2 elements (switches and host's NICs). You may compare, inside a switch only, the treatment of a broadcast frame with the operation of flooding mechanism only in the particular case when the LAN is composed by a sole L2 switch.

At host's NIC level a received broadcast frame is always passed upwards while a frame received due to the "flooding" mechanism is discarded unless the respective NIC is also the destination for that frame or works in promiscvous mode.

Maybe the best way to perceive the difference is to meditate to the basic definition of VLAN as a broadcast domain.