a multicast relay system for use in a wide area network , includes an input receptive of multicast data specifying a multicast channel having a multicast address . a proxy election module is adapted to elect a multicasting server proxy disposed within a subnet associated in memory with the multicast channel , wherein the multicasting server proxy is adapted to receive the multicast data and multicast the multicast data on the multicast address within the subnet . a multicast data relay module is adapted to transmit the multicast data to the multicasting server proxy .