Overlay Network

A network that is layered on top of another network

Normally on top of HTTP. Fun fact! The Internet was originally built as an overlay upon the telephone network

Examples:

• VPN

  • WireGuard

• OpenZiti

• ZeroTier

• Tailscale (or the open source version Headscale)

• Almost all peer-to-peer distributed systems

  • Most notably, DHTs