New overlay-based services aim to provide properties like resilience, availability or QoS. To achieve this, automatic organization and optimization is required, which again demands accurate information about the network. Collecting and exchanging this data has a significant impact on the network, especially if several overlays are used on the same host. In this paper, we provide a survey of the current state of the art and identify challenges which must be addressed in order for new overlay-based services to be successful. We present our own solution CLIO, a cross-layer information service for overlays. CLIO provides information for the automatic creation and optimization of overlays. The service supports multiple overlays on the same node, the provided information is overlay-independent, and collected information is reused.