Embodiments of the present invention provide a multicast profile switching method. In the method, using a multicast profile management module, a multicast profile switching request message is received from a cable modem termination system CMTS. A multicast profile having a maximum rate and commonly supported by all current multicast group members is determined. When the multicast profile having the maximum rate is different from a current multicast profile that is running, a multicast profile switching instruction is sent to the CMTS, where the multicast profile switching instruction is used to instruct the CMTS to perform multicast profile switching.