Standard Virtual Extensible Local Area Network (VXLAN) headers do not provide the space to carry policy information from ingress Network Virtual Ethernet (NVE) devices to egress NVE devices. The option to provide the bits/bytes to carry this information is provided with different header formats, however, some bases are unable to parse these other frame formats. According to techniques described herein, group-based policies may be implemented over standard VXLAN overlays, thereby eliminating the cost of implementing custom protocol modifications and helping data center customers by remaining with their existing fabrics without costly upgrades