Is ESP-Now Master always transmitting?

[philipc]

Is the ESP-NOW always transmitting? I have used the ESP-NOW 2-way communication example from the Arduino IDE and set up a basic send-reply-send using 2 ESP32. The code is not complete yet but much of it is done. What I'm trying to figure out is if the sender (Master) is always trying to communicate with the receiver and therefore always broadcasting? So if someone was able to, could they listen to the broadcast from the Master? The receiver/Slave is always listening, which makes sense, but it is listening for the MAC address ie not transmitting until the Master reaches out.

[MicroController]

The ESP-NOW protocol doesn't have a "master" or a "slave"; all nodes can send or receive at any time. And no, nodes are not transmitting/broadcasting when there's nothing to transmit, but all nodes are listening while ESP-NOW is running.