Best way to load balance 2 T3s

That should work.  As an FYI, you don't need to set the admin distance on both, since they will both default to the same admin distance anyway.  

Like you said, this will only load balance outbound traffic and won't influence inbound.  You'll need to talk to your ISP about that.

Also be aware that the type of switching used on your router will greatly influence load balancing.  By default, Fast Switching is turned on most routers.  This caches route entries - which means that once a route is looked up, all subsequent traffic will flow over the same path.  Therefore, you will have "per session" load balancing rather than "per packet" load balancing.  This is less than perfect and can lead to very wide swings in which interface is used more.  This is less than ideal, but the alternative (turning off caching and forcing route lookups on every packet) should not be considered an option as you will most likely lose tons of traffic (especially on a router with 2 T3's).

Hope that helps.

do you recommend per-packet load balancing?  How do I turn that on?  Is it "no ip route-cache"?

Just curious, why is BGP not an option?

yes, no ip route-cache turns off fast switching.

I don't want to have to coordinate BGP with the ISP right now -that means I have routing responsibilities extended to a company of which I have little or no control.

??????

How do you think anything gets to you now?  Bringing BGP in-house is all about taking control.  Currently, your network is part of your ISP's BGP advertisements to the rest of the Internet.  They also have to set up internal routing to your network(s).  Bringing BGP in-house means that you eliminate most of that and bring all of the control to you.  

I would have to join an autonomous system that my ISP uses, filter route updates, make sure I'm not used as a transit, etc.  Sure, more control, but also more configuration.  If something happens in regards to BGP in the autonomous system it can affect me directly.

A default static works just fine.  Let the ISP worry about picking up the packets.

Since you are obviously using only 1 ISP for both t-3's I would see about implementing cef on your router and see if your ISP will as well.  Then you would be able to do per-packet load balancing.  We do that with almost every remote office with a decent load.  They get 2 T-1s for redundancy and load.  It works perfectly.  Besides that I can agree with you that there is definitely some initial design issues and increased management in running BGP but the key word is initial.  Once setup correctly there shouldn't be anything to it.

Can't you just ask the ISP for your own private AS number? With two DS-3s, you have some purchasing power. If you have a private AS number (65xxx range, or whatever the RFC  requires), you will be able to use IBGP, and be able to control routing without needing a full table or worrying about other customers.

Just thinking out loud. Not a BGP expert, learning like everyone else.

jgarr, an ISP doesn't give out AS numbers you must buy them from ARIN but the ISP can use a range of AS numbers that are considered for private use, kind of like 10.x.x.x network ranges.  ISP's commonly give these out to customers.  You can't use this if multihomed of course.  The purpose of these is to run BGP from one ISP to a customer that requires it.  This would ofcourse be EBGP though not IBGP.  IBGP would be set up if you had multiple routers talking BGP in the same AS.

Thanks for the feedback guys -I'm getting closer.  Just a couple more questions on this:

I have one 3640 router with 2 hssi cards in it, connected to 2 DS3 circuits.  I decided on using cef and static routes to load balance.  However, when I bring the second hssi interface up, it goes into an "up up" state, everything green (rd cd etc.) but I cannot ping the ISP, nor can I ping the ip address on that interface.  I'm not sure what the problem is here.  Any ideas? -I'm close.

I understand that their are private AS ranges- I was unclear if there were 2 isps, or just one. If it were a single ISP, I thought it may have been possible. anyway, I'll be watching to see how things go.

thanks and good luck.

update,

I have the 2 DS3 circuits up and running with 2 deafult routes, i.e.

ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 x.x.x.x
ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 x.x.x.x

I also have "down when looped" statements on my hssi interfaces.  However, when one of these links fails, the router will continue to route over the bad link, thus black holing packets.  Is there a way around this?