One embodiment of the present invention provides a computing system. The switch includes a discovery module, a device management module, and a logical group management module. The discovery module constructs a multicast query message for a first multicast group to which the computing system is registered. The device management module extracts information about a remote switch from a query response message from the remote switch and constructs a client database, wherein a first entry in the client database contains the information extracted from the query response message. The logical group management module associates the remote switch with a second multicast group.