i have a 7206 configuration that is running ebgp. This happens to be running ebgp between 2 peers within the same isp however(same remote- as number. Both of the peers have different ip addresses though). This isp is handing us a 100mb ethernet connection over fiber. Just wondering if it is accepted practice to be running ebgp this way instead of having the peers at different isp's.
There are some advantages to being dual homed. You can be more granular with your prefixes since your ISP will accept ones that are longer than 24 bits (this is useful if your connections terminate on different PE routers). Or, if your links both terminate on the same PE router, you can load balance your traffic with multipath. Being dual-homed to the same ISP is a lot less complicated than being multi- homed, but you give up the advantage of being able to optimize based on peering diversity between different ISPs.
Your situation is not unique and there is nothing wrong with doing it that way; you're still getting at least some redundancy and it's a lot easier to get started with one ISP. If and when you decide to move on to ISP diversity, you'll want to be sure to familiarize yourself with each ISP's BGP Policy and how they treat routes from their BGP customers versus peer ISPs. Also, if you don't have your own ASN, you'll have to get one through ARIN. You'll also have to consider whether you want to load balance, which is not an exact science across multiple ISPs, or if you will be using one connection as a pure backup.
Lotsa stuff to think about if you're going to be multi-homed.
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