Maybe I missed something in the original BGP question, but it sounded much like this. A single router has at least two connections to upstream providers [for arguement sake, different ones]. BGP is used to negotiate the transfer of routing information from their core routers (as opposed to border) into this single router. [There can be multiple single routers in this description, but the idea is that this single router is a border, and the only communications it really passes are internal routing information, not external routing information. This router is not a transit router between any two upstream providers] If there are two paths with the same number of hops, across two different size/speed/congestion level links, BGP makes a somewhat arbitrary decision based on IP address of the interface. I don't think this decision is passed on to other routers in the original question's model. I picture a guy with a T-1 or two, or a 10Mbit FNS connection and a few T1s. If I am wrong, don't waste your time correcting me, just ignore this as I am just looking for clarification of the question; I just want to know whether anything interesting will come out of this thread or not. In this model, this decision is not passed onto other routers [in the sense that this single router will in many cases advertise the same set of routes to both providers] it is just trying to decide which path to send the data down. OSPF [like someone else mentioned] keeps in mind link speed issues and automatically adjusts metrics according to some text book method. [which can be overriden. I think ether is 1000, and FDDI is 100] If this router were to look at the BW setting on each interface, and look at packet loss on each interface, AOTE, I don't see the problem it would cause (either in CPU load, or flapping). Again, in this model, this is not a border router at a NAP, this is a router nicely buried in two or three bigger networks. I don't think we are dealing with an NP complete (Traveling Salesman) type problem either because we are not trying to look very "deep" into the upstream network, just 1 link. And again this is not being propagated to any other routers. Any problems with this model? Of course, if this single router flaps, AND the upstream network provider's customer-connection routers do not have half decent access lists/filter paths on them, lots of problems could arise, but a lot of that is easy to fix. For example, a network A was receiving network B advertisements from one of its customers who also has a connection to network B, network A started using the customer's connection for transit to network B because of this. Filtering customer route announcements is pretty important for security, and flap dampening is essentially just another kind if filtering. Did I miss any issues? -Deepak.