Short answer: the network between our Dutch datacenters is an EVPN-VXLAN fabric running over our own lit dark fiber, built and operated by our sister company Xyphen IT. For you that means two things most hosting providers can't offer: a private Layer 2 segment that spans multiple locations as if it were one LAN — for example across Amsterdam, Ede and Naaldwijk — and the ability to extend external networks, such as an internet exchange, straight onto your VPS or colocation.
Network as a foundation, not an afterthought. Here's what's under the hood and what you can actually do with it.
What is EVPN-VXLAN?
Classic Ethernet was designed for a single cable, not a country. Stretch a traditional Layer 2 network across multiple datacenters and you drag its weaknesses along: spanning tree blocking your redundant paths, flood-and-learn traffic crossing expensive WAN links, and a broadcast storm at one site taking down every site.
EVPN-VXLAN is the open IETF standard that fixes this:
- VXLAN wraps Ethernet frames in UDP packets and carries them over a plain routed IP network. All paths are active (ECMP), and failover becomes a routing event instead of a spanning-tree event.
- EVPN distributes MAC addresses as BGP routes: every switch knows where an address lives before the first frame leaves. No flooding, active-active multihoming, and sub-second recovery after a failure instead of minutes.
- Segments are strictly isolated per customer: over 16 million possible VNIs instead of 4096 VLANs, and traffic from different customers never touches.
The full technical write-up — including why classic L2 breaks down over WAN and how the control plane works — is in the Xyphen IT knowledge base article EVPN-VXLAN explained. They build and operate the fabric; we deliver our servers on top of it. Same infrastructure, same engineers.
What it gets you at PlanetNode
A nice network story is one thing — what matters is what you can do with it. Three examples from practice:
1. A VPS with an IX port
Want to peer at an internet exchange without racking your own hardware in a datacenter? On the fabric we can extend an IX port as a private segment straight to your VPS. Your virtual machine gets a second interface that sits directly on the exchange, next to its regular uplink — with your own ASN and your own BGP sessions, without colocation costs. For network engineers, CDN experiments or a route collector, that's a setup that normally starts at a rack full of your own iron.
2. One LAN across Amsterdam, Ede and Naaldwijk
If you run colocation or dedicated servers at several of our locations, we can join them into a single Layer 2 domain: a stretch across, say, Amsterdam, Ede and Naaldwijk. Your servers see each other as if they were in the same rack — useful for live migration between sites, synchronous replication, or clusters that simply demand L2 adjacency. And because it's EVPN rather than a classic stretched VLAN, every path is active and a failure at one site stays local.
3. Everything in one private segment
VPSes, dedicated servers and your own colocated hardware in one isolated network, across locations. Your database on dedicated iron in Ede, your application servers as VPSes in Amsterdam, your backup target in Naaldwijk — internal traffic that never touches the public internet and never passes through someone else's firewall rules.
Honest advice: route where you can
We wouldn't be engineers if we didn't add this: a stretched Layer 2 network is something you deliberately keep small. Routing where possible remains the advice — you stretch L2 only for what genuinely needs it, like live migration or clusters that require it. EVPN-VXLAN removes the biggest risks of classic stretched L2, but a broadcast domain spanning two cities still deserves a deliberate design. We're happy to think that through with you — even if the conclusion is that you don't need it.
Something for your setup?
An IX port on your VPS, a stretch between locations, or a private segment across your whole environment: it starts with a conversation about what you want to achieve. Get in touch and you'll talk to an engineer who knows the fabric first-hand. No script, just an engineer.