Hi all, First, an apology if this is off topic. A (brief) intro/explanation. My name is Sheryl Chapin. I am the network administrator for a startup ISP in Maine. I would say that I am the sr. network admin, except I am the *only* network admin. I have 18 years expierience in computers, 10 years with Unix and 3 with Cisco routers. I am not a programmer, I am a system and network administrator. My topology: I have two 7513's in two different cities in Maine: Portland and Winthrop. They are connected via a T3. I have a T3 connection to UU Net from Portland and in a week I will have a T3 connection to AGIS from Winthrop. I have a *very* basic BGP configuration running on the Portland router right now. What I need is some practical help/advice on how to configure my routers once AGIS is also connected. I want to be able to load balance and I would like to do it without crashing a major portion of the internet. I have been reading everything I can find on BGP, Avi Freedman's columns and web pages have been extremely helpfull, but the Cisco documentation just gives me a headache. I am not a stupid person, but I am willing to admit that I have never done this level of configuration before. I figure I can either ask for some help and look stupid or crash the internet, and quite frankly, I would rather look stupid then do something stupid. (Mr. Freedman's columns do a really good job of putting the fear of God into someone just starting out with BGP :-) Part of my problem is the documenation does a good job of giving me syntax, but not of explaining WHY I should or should not do something. For example, UU Net gave me configuration commands for turning on BGP which included a "redistribute connected" command. Someone else from another ISP here in Maine (that we are co-locating with) told me not to use it. Now I know what the redistribute command does, I just haven't found anything anywhere to explain what the pros and cons are for using it. How does it affect the routing? I really work better when I understand how things work. So if anyone has any advice, caveats, pointers to docs, things I absolutely should do or things I absolutely shouldn't do, I would be EXTREMELY grateful. If this is just totally off topic, again, my apologies. Thanks for your time. Sheryl Chapin CommTel Internet 207.377.3508 schapin@ctel.net