expectations for bgp peering?

[mike <mike-nanog () tiedyenetworks com>]

Hello,

So I am just wondering what my expecations should be in a bgp peering 
scenario where I am multihomed with my own ASN and arin assigned ip 
space. At issue is the fact that my backup isp forced me to use ebgp 
multihop to peer with a router internal to their network and not the 
border router I am directly attached to, and secondly, that they say I 
am not allowed to prepend at all - they will do it for me, and from the 
looks of things they have established a route-map that just prepends 
their AS 6 times to my announcement.

   This smells of bad engineering. I have looked up the bgp report for 
my provider and they have 0 downstream AS's, and the week that this 
project has taken (and it's still not up and working) has left me with 
less than absolute confidence in the provider. I want to know if anyone 
has an opinion on ebgp multihop for external customers, and wether I 
should really have an expectation to be able to assign my prepends as 
suits my needs? Are there any conditions that could make this fail that 
I should be aware of?

Mike-