Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) appears in (almost) all respects as an Ethernet type service to customers of a Service Provider (SP). A VPLS glues together several individual LANs across a packet switched network to appear and function as a single bridged LAN. This is accomplished by incorporating MAC address learning, flooding, and forwarding functions in the context of pseudowires that connect these individual LANs across the packet switched network. LDP signaling is used for the setup and teardown of the mesh of pseudowires that constitute a given VPLS instance.

This feature is available when configuring BGP in the multi agent routing protocol model. Ethernet VPN (EVPN) is an extension of the BGP protocol introducing a new address family: L2VPN (address family number 25) / EVPN (subsequent address family number 70). It is used to exchange overlay MAC and IP address reachability information between BGP peers . EVPN supports the exchange of layer 3 IPv4 and IPv6 overlay routes through the extensions described in (type 5 EVPN routes).