Multicast forwarding enables one-to-many information dissemination. Multicast
applications are useful for dissemination of information to multiple clients, where
clients do not require reception of the entire content. A typical application is a
cable-TV-like service, where clients can join a channel in the middle of a
transmission, and leave before it ends.

The data is sent only to relevant ports. Forwarding the data only to the relevant
ports conserves bandwidth and host resources on links.