OTV Alternatives – Stretching Layer 2 Network Across Datacenters

ciscocisco-catalystcisco-nx-osvss

We want to find a "safe" way to stretch layer 2 network across 2 data-centers, and since we don't have any equipment running NX-OS on either data-centers we can't use OTV.
So what are the alternatives for us who have the following equipment at hand:

Data-center 1: 2x 6509-E in VSS (SUP720, IP Services)

Data-center 2: 2x 4500-X in VSS (IP Base at the moment)

Best Answer

VPLS, AToM, and L2TP are also additional ways to glue ports together that land on distant routers. Some of them require MPLS on all the in-between routers, but L2TP(v3 in particular) does not require anything besides ip routing on the intermediary routers. Basically, they glue together two remote router ports, and can usually pass spanning tree, etc, since they're not acting as switches in this regard.