Wondering if any of you have any experience with ISP link load balancers such as F5 Link Controller, Radware LinkProof, or AstroCorp Powerlink.
I currently have 2 ISPs (A 1.5 T1 from each, soon to go to 3mb) (Sprint & Nuvox) with 2 - 2621xm routers setup with BGP. We have a Class C from Arin that is advertised on both ISPs.
When we set this up, the routers were able to handle full routes but within the last year, we had to setup only default routes since the routers could not handle the BGP load.
I am an not Cisco engineer, but know enough about BGP to know that to truely get inbound and outbound load balancing, it is a very difficult process and is alot of trial and error and requires much expertise which we don't have. Also, most times we have had an issue with failure on one link, the failure is not "complete" (rather high latency on one network) and therefore the BGP does not really kick in. I have had to physically shut the router down that was connected to the ISP with latency to force it to switch over.
I am considering using a load balancing appliance such as the ones above and removing the BGP setup. It seems that the features of an appliance are compelling. Even if I decided that I wanted to stay with BGP, I would need to get bigger routers and incurr significant consulting expense and that may cost even more than an appliance solution. I definatley don't want to continue on the BGP method and then still wish I had a balancing appliance.
What are your thoughts. Thanks!!