advantages/disadvantages of hidden vs. real primary (on a 1 MBit link)

[Frank Joerdens]

Greetings. I've been running a hidden primary on a 1 MBit link for 3
years, and so far, up until very recently that is, it's worked pretty
well - for our purposes anyway. Now our provider's gone belly-up and it
turns out that in this special case, it can be a real drag. While the
physical link is still operational and reasonably stable, their
nameservers have become really unstable since they filed for bankruptcy
(presumably because many of the tech people have already left the
sinking ship). Now that we're switching to the new provider, I am
wondering whether not just to have a real primary. The arguments against
it are a) traffic which may bog down the 1 MBit link and b) availability
(we don't have an autonomous system). The argument for it is ease of
configuration (the tech person at the new provider's I talked to today
didn't really know what it was, had to admit that he was out of his
depth and that he would have to ask a more knowledgeable colleague; the
old provider never manged to get classless in-addr-arpa delegation to
work although I did point them to the relevant RFC). Hence my questions
are: Do these arguments really hold any water, and, are there any
others? What's the current wisdom on this matter?

Regards, Frank