a method for reducing computational and/or bandwidth requirements in a network including a multicast router and a layer 2 network element by efficiently communicating required source state information. The method comprises receiving at the layer 2 network element a source interest list from a host over a multicast network. The layer 2 multicast network element transmits a message to the multicast router, the message formatted to be processed by a multicast routing protocol on the multicast router after a protocol header is removed by a light host management protocol on the multicast router without any additional processing. Responsive to receiving the message at the multicast router, the light host management protocol removes the protocol header and sending the message to the multicast routing protocol to alter a set of multicast sources to be routed to the host.