Providing layer 2 services over layer 3 IP only network

Hey y’all,

We’re a small WISP and have landed an opportunity that wants a backup private WAN built for their 80+ locations. Currently they have an AT&T VPLS.

Their requirements are that we provide them a single layer 2 fabric that they connect their site routers to with a single head end at their data center, or main site.

No VLAN tags will need to be passed from the sites No multicast No QoS 50-100Mbps per site

Couple of questions/notes:

Our network is IP only, no MPLS, although we do run a few VRF’s at each tower.

At first, we were thinking a site router would be required on our end for each of their sites. I was thinking something like a 2951 for each site and an ASR at the head end as it will be 1Gbps+. Now that I think about this more, since many sites will be at the same POP, it may make sense to have a VPLS/VXLAN router still each of our POP’s to pass layer 2 between them (all POP’s are layer 3 only, no L2 between them for our network so we’ll have to encapsulate).

Should we lean towards VPLS over GRE, or look at VXLAN here?

Is there any reason each site should have their own router or, could we choose a VLAN per POP, then link those VLAN’s together via VPLS/VXLAN? Or even EoMPLS over GRE?

I lean towards VXLAN since it seems like it was built to natively encapsulate over layer 3. Then we’ll just use an ASR at each POP.