Patent ID: 7599367

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, by a L2 network device, a multicast frame comprising a multicast group destination address, wherein the multicast frame is associated with a broadcast domain; comparing the multicast group destination address with one or more table entries in an address table; and if there is no corresponding table entry in the address table to the multicast group destination address, then determining a network protocol type of the multicast frame, comparing the network protocol type of the multicast frame with the one or more table entries in the address table to identify a multicast flood domain associated with the network protocol type of the multicast frame, and transmitting the multicast frame or a replication thereof via the multicast flood domain, wherein the address table comprises an entry for the multicast flood domain that identifies a first set of ports which is less than all ports associated with the broadcast domain on the network device, and the address table comprises a plurality of entries each corresponding to a multicast flood domain and having an association with a network protocol type of a plurality of network protocol types.