A bridge (60, 61, 62) capable of reducing unwanted WAN multicast packet traffic in a LAN (40) is disclosed. The bridge (60, 61, 62) examines the contents of WAN multicast query and report packets and includes this information in its filtering database (88). The bridge (60, 61, 62) designates ports (80a, 80b, 80c, 80d, 80e) on which query packets are received as query ports. When there is no WAN router (64, 66) generating multicast query packets into the LAN (40), the bridge (60, 61, 62) simulates the behavior of a WAN router (64, 66) and generates WAN multicast query packets so as to cause report packet generation by end systems (50, 51, 52). A timeout interval for undesignating query ports and a method for determining an appropriate timeout for a port is disclosed.
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