--- title: Why Would You Need an Overlay Network? « ipSpace.net blog description: A network engineer's VP wants to eliminate overlay networks (OTV, VXLAN, EVPN) since the company owns its optical infrastructure. The post explains the core... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/why-would-you-need-an-overlay-network-ipspace-net-blog-ivbybbzc4 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Why Would You Need an Overlay Network? « ipSpace.net blog | daily.dev og:description: A network engineer's VP wants to eliminate overlay networks (OTV, VXLAN, EVPN) since the company owns its optical infrastructure. The post explains the core... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/why-would-you-need-an-overlay-network-ipspace-net-blog-ivbybbzc4 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/IvbYbBzC4.png og:image:alt: Why Would You Need an Overlay Network? « ipSpace.net blog og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Why Would You Need an Overlay Network? « ipSpace.net blog **[ipSpace.net Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/ipspace)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A network engineer's VP wants to eliminate overlay networks (OTV, VXLAN, EVPN) since the company owns its optical infrastructure. The post explains the core reasons overlays remain valuable: keeping forwarding tables small and stable, enabling path separation for security and multi-tenancy, handling overlapping address spaces, and supporting legacy protocols. It also covers tradeoffs including visibility challenges, troubleshooting complexity, control plane overhead, and the pitfalls of naive 1:1 VLAN-to-VXLAN mappings and overly complex EVPN+MPLS+SR stitching between DCs. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why would I need an overlay network like VXLAN or EVPN if I own and control my own physical network? Overlay networks serve several purposes even when you own the physical infrastructure. They keep forwarding tables on transit devices small and stable by hiding endpoint addresses. They enable path separation for security domains, multi-tenancy, and overlapping address spaces without requiring parallel physical infrastructure. They also provide the easiest path for carrying legacy protocols (IPv6, SCSI, bridging) without polluting the core network. _Network architects weighing overlay vs. underlay design decisions find the ongoing debate covered on daily.dev._ ### What are the main tradeoffs of using VXLAN and EVPN overlay networks? Key tradeoffs include reduced visibility and harder performance management, an additional control plane that creates more abstraction layers and cascading failure surfaces, and significantly harder troubleshooting since few tools correlate underlay and overlay problems. Equipment sizing becomes more complex, vendors often can't give concrete guidance, and stitching two EVPN DCs with MPLS and SR tends to produce fragile, overly complex policy configurations. _Teams evaluating EVPN and VXLAN deployments track real-world implementation experiences on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Why your KubeVirt VMs can’t move between clusters — and how EVPN fixes it](https://daily.dev/posts/why-your-kubevirt-vms-can-t-move-between-clusters-and-how-evpn-fixes-it-mgxtn2hdf) · The New Stack · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/why-would-you-need-an-overlay-network-ipspace-net-blog-ivbybbzc4) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Why Would You Need an Overlay Network? « ipSpace.net blog","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-would-you-need-an-overlay-network-ipspace-net-blog-ivbybbzc4","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-would-you-need-an-overlay-network-ipspace-net-blog-ivbybbzc4"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:56:05.937Z","dateModified":"2026-08-11T09:21:16.697Z","description":"A network engineer's VP wants to eliminate overlay networks (OTV, VXLAN, EVPN) since the company owns its optical infrastructure. 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