Refer to the exhibit. Traffic was equally balanced between Layer 3 links on core switches SW1 and SW2 before an introduction of the new video server in the network. This video server uses multicast to

Adding more physical links without aggregation does not change the hash algorithm, so L3 load balancing will still map all same-destination multicast traffic to a single link.

Layer 2 link aggregation (EtherChannel/LACP) combines physical links into one logical bundle and can load-balance using source/destination MAC or other Layer 2 fields. Because multicast frames share one destination IP but can have varying source MACs and ports, the aggregation hash distributes them across member links instead of forcing them all to the same link as L3 IP-hash load balancing would.

SW1 load-balancing granularity cannot help if the root problem is that all multicast packets share the same destination IP, which any IP-hash method will resolve to the same link.

Adjusting SW2's load-balancing method alone does not address the upstream imbalance created by the multicast group's shared destination IP on the inter-switch links.

Filtering IGMP joins suppresses legitimate multicast group membership and denies video delivery to hosts rather than solving the link utilization imbalance.