A distributed switch may include a hierarchy with one or more levels of surrogate sub-switches (and surrogate bridge elements) that enable the distributed switch to scale bandwidth based on the size of the membership of a multicast group. Moreover, each surrogate may optimize the hierarchy according to one or more optimization criteria. For example, each surrogate in the hierarchy may have the necessary information to ensure that if the next surrogate in the hierarchy is unavailable, the data may be routed to a backup surrogate. The selected hierarchy may be further optimized by skipping surrogates (or a surrogate level) such that the data intended for a skipped surrogate is sent to a surrogate in a lower-level of the hierarchy. This may better utilize the connection interfaces in the transmitting sub-switches and eliminate any unnecessary surrogate-to-surrogate transfers.