A system and method for performing IGMP at an router, GMQ on homes serviced by the IGMP router or channels. Each channel has a corresponding broadcast group characterized in that a plurality of the counters are provided at the IGMP router. Each counter is associated with the unique host and channel combination and is incremented after a response time interval, which begins when the IGMP router sends a GMQ message to the host, has elapsed and the IGMP router has failed to receive a Join report for the host and channel combination associated with that counter and responsive to a counter being equal to a selected robustness parameter, the host and channel combination associated with the counter is dropped from the broadcast group corresponding to the channel of that host and channel combination.