US Patent 11784926 Optimized processing of multicast data messages in a host

Some embodiments provide a method for forwarding multicast data messages at a forwarding element on a host computer. The method receives a multicast data message from a routing element executing on the host computer along with metadata appended to the multicast data message by the routing element. Based on a destination address of the multicast data message, the method identifies a set of recipient ports for a multicast group with which the multicast data message is associated. For each recipient port, the method uses the metadata appended to the multicast data message by the routing element to determine whether to deliver a copy of the multicast data message to the recipient port.