A router receives a leave message from a host on a subscriber circuit. The leave message indicates a request to stop receiving a multicast stream that is associated with a group object. The interface between the router and network elements including, but not limited to, a remote multicast replication interface. A group specific query is then sent on the subscriber circuit, and is directed to hosts on the subscriber circuit and regards only the multicast group of the received request. Next the group object association with the subscriber circuit is removed from the record at the router if, in response to the group specific query, no host of the subscriber circuit reports receiving the traffic stream corresponding to the multicast group identified in the leave message.