A frame that is being sent by one station to a specific destination station on the network. On an Ethernet network, a directed frame is one that uses the hexadecimal MAC address of a specific target machine on the network as its destination address. The directed frame is picked up by the target machine and is ignored by all other machines on the network.
Directed frames are used for most network communication because they are the most efficient type of frame for communication. However, some services, such as network announcements, require that all stations on the network receive a frame. To send a frame to all stations on the network, you use a broadcast frame instead of a directed frame.