IP broadcast vs Multicast

[peabody]

Okay, sometimes I feel that I don't know as much as I should...

I plan to use VLC to stream our cable through our house via IP so anybody with a computer and a wireless card can use it. I figured the easiest way to do this would be to stream to our subnet broadcast (192.168.1.255 on our private network).

At my work, this seems to work just fine. However, at home, this had the effect of killing our linksys router's connection to the Internet. I'm not sure why. I don't think this should be happening, but it does, everytime I stream to broadcast. I have to go unplug and then plug it back in. I'm guessing it's the router's fault, as even if vlc wasn't doing this right, that's no excuse for the router biting the dust.

However, if I setup a private multicast within our subnet, streaming works fine and our connection stays up. Of course, this incurs all the penalties of using multicast (having the multicast take over the person's Network connection making it so people listening to the stream can't surf the web or download at the same time).

I'm wondering if anyone else has been experiencing the same thing, or if I should instead chuck my router out the window and buy a new one? Is streaming via IP broadcast bad?