I called Sprint. They said to multihome, load balance across to distinct
backbones (i.e Sprint & UUNET), and accept the full routing table, I'd have
to use a 7000 series.
I didn't believe them, so I logged a call with the TAC. They said they knew
of no technical reason why the 4500 wouldn't do the trick, but maybe I
should call my sales engineer.
My sales engineer said the 4500 would to the trick (of course they'd prefer
to sell me a 7000), but I might have to accept reduced routes or perform
some other kludge to reduce the load on the router; and no telling what the
performance would be like 2 months from now.
Note: Our primary interest is bypassing problems we're experiencing between
Sprint and UUNET via MAE-E, but we'd like to offer the best connectivity to
our web servers.
I called Sprint back, and they said they could work out a 'Special Customer
Arrangement' to deal with the 4500.
Based on the e-mail addresses I see on this group, it seems like we should
be able to come to some consensus about the
viability/sensibility/performance related issues related to this topology.