RE: Multi-homed clients and BGP timers

If you want to converge a little fast than BGP holdtimes here and the fiber link is directly between the routers, you might look at something akin to Cisco's "bgp fast-external-fallover", which immediately resets the session if the link layer is reset or lost.

Also things to consider: BFD for BGP and UDLD will help identify link failures faster. (If all of your equipment supports it, YMMV, etc). Deepak