In one embodiment, a lower protocol layer in a network device filters packets based on a class and a particular of a destination address prior to sending information from the received packet to a higher protocol layer. For example, certain constrained networks include network nodes that do not have the ability to maintain a multicast distribution entry for each multicast address used in the network. By only forwarding on a portion of a multicast address, packets are often delivered to nodes in addition to the actual multicast subscribers. By filtering these incorrectly delivered packets at a lower protocol layer (e.g., layer 2 or layer 3), processing cycles at higher protocol layers are avoided. Additionally in one embodiment, class and particulars are deterministically determined (e.g., using a same hashing function) such that services can be discovered and used by subscribing to a corresponding multicast group.