A system and method are employed for forwarding multicast packets among a plurality of interfaces. A multicast packet having a scope value and a multicast group identifier (ID) value is received on an inbound interface. A VLAN designation associated with the inbound interface is identified. If the scope value in the received multicast packet indicates that the multicast packet has a link-local scope, a look-up address is generated that includes the identified VLAN designation and the multicast group ID value of the multicast packet. If the scope value in the received multicast packet indicates that the multicast packet has a site-local scope or an organization-local scope, the identified VLAN designation is used to retrieve a site identifier associated with the VLAN designation, and a look-up address is generated that includes the retrieved site identifier and the multicast group ID value. Finally, the look-up address is used to render a forwarding decision for the multicast packet.