overlay transport virtualization (VXLAN) (OTV)

Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) is an overlay technique used to interconnect Layer 2 networks via the network layer (Layer 3).

The OTV technique is suitable for data center networks as an alternative to Shortest Path Bridging( SPB) with TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links), but also to the Virtual Extensible LANs(VXLAN) infrastructure protocol and for Data Center Interconnect( DCI).

The OTV protocol is a self-learning protocol that incorporates previous solution approaches into the protocol operation. It works across platforms and is supported by IP over MPLS backbones.