A method and apparatus for providing quality of service parameters for transmissions of multicast streams on a cable network is provided. A cable network headend connects an external network to a hybrid fiber coax or cable network. The cable network headend maintains a table of cable modems with entries associating each cable modem with one or more quality of service parameters. Virtual cable modem entries are created for multicast streams when indications of quality of service for multicast streams are received by the cable network headend. Multicast packets arriving at the cable network headend are processed using the stored quality of service parameters for the corresponding multicast stream. The multicast packets may then be transmitted, queued, or dropped depending on the specified parameters and traffic shaping or policing algorithms.