A system and method for efficiently creating multicast groups is disclosed. The system includes a gateway controller, that receives a multicast request from a client. The gateway controller parses the request from the client and identifies the set of the desired destination nodes. The gateway controller then determines whether an existing multicast group matches this set. If not, the gateway controller creates a new multicast group, preferably by modifying an existing multicast group by adding new destination nodes to that group. This is an efficient way to create multicast groups, as it increases the number of nodes reacting simultaneously to multicast messages when creating multicast groups, and minimizes the number of messages that are required to synchronize the nodes to the new multicast group.