Aspects of the subject technology relate to systems for arbitrating direct forwarder (“DF”) instantiation between VPC peers used to facilitating the transport of bidirectional multicast traffic over a L2/L3 network boundary. In some aspects, arbitration of DF instantiation on a given VPC peer can include determining a first set of metrics for a first VPC switch, determining a second set of metrics for a second VPC switch, and determining, at the first VPC switch, whether to instantiate a designated forwarder (DF) operation based on a comparison of the first set of metrics and the second set of metrics. Methods and machine-readable media are also provided.