| CPC H04L 45/16 (2013.01) | 20 Claims |

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1. A method comprising:
broadcasting, by a source-side designated router (DR) coupled to a source device of a multicast group, a service-advertisement packet;
receiving a response packet to the service-advertisement packet from a client-side DR coupled to one or more client devices within the multicast group;
determining, by the source-side DR, an address of the client-side DR based on the received response packet;
establishing a hardware-based communication tunnel between the source-side DR and the client-side DR using the address of the client-side DR, wherein establishing the hardware-based communication tunnel comprises using hardware logic units within the source-side DR to encapsulate multicast data packets originating from the source device;
sending, by the source-side DR over the hardware-based communication tunnel, the multicast data packets originating from the source device to the client-side DR, which forwards the multicast data packets to the one or more client devices within the multicast group.
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