OTV vs. VPLS: Advantages for Data Center Redundancy

A.

OTV (Overlay Transport Virtualization) and VPLS (Virtual Private LAN Service) are both technologies that can be used for data center redundancy. However, OTV offers several advantages over VPLS:

The correct answer to this question is B, "provides head-end replication."

Head-end replication is a key feature of OTV that enables it to provide better redundancy and load balancing compared to VPLS. With head-end replication, OTV can replicate all the broadcast, multicast, and unknown unicast (BUM) traffic that is destined for a VLAN across multiple OTV sites. This means that even if one of the OTV sites goes down, the BUM traffic can still be forwarded to the remaining sites, ensuring that the VLAN is still reachable.

In contrast, VPLS uses a meshed network topology to provide redundancy, where every site is connected to every other site. While this can provide redundancy, it can also result in a lot of unnecessary traffic on the network. Additionally, VPLS does not have head-end replication, which means that BUM traffic is flooded to all sites, even if it is not needed.

The other answer options are incorrect:

A. "prevents loops on point-to-point links" - both OTV and VPLS have mechanisms to prevent loops, so this is not a unique advantage of OTV.

C. "uses a proactive MAC advertisement" - both OTV and VPLS use MAC address learning and advertisement, so this is not a unique advantage of OTV.

D. "provides full-mesh connectivity" - both OTV and VPLS can provide full-mesh connectivity, so this is not a unique advantage of OTV.