Open vswitch is a production quality, multilayer, software-based, ethernet virtual switch. it is designed to enable massive network automation through programmatic extension, while still supporting standard management interfaces and protocols (e.g. netflow, sflow, span, rspan, cli, lacp, 802.1ag). in addition, it is designed to support distribution across multiple physical servers similar to vmware's vnetwork distributed vswitch or cisco's nexus 1000v.

openvswitch-brcompat provides a way for applications that use the linux bridge to gradually migrate to open vswitch. programs that ordinarily control the linux bridge module, such as "brctl", instead control the open vswitch kernel-based switch.

once this package is installed, adding brcompat=yes in /etc/default/openvswitch-switch enables bridge compatibility.