Questions post-moving here - reccomendationss please on ISPs, Cellphone service, vets etc (Ammon: home, eat)

[banjomike]

There are a lot of good vets in Idaho Falls. I know most of them.
The guy I use is Dr. Les Stone for my dogs and cats. (I only have one dog now) his clinic is on Lomax Ave.

Les doesn't have the greatest person to person skills, especially when he sees a pet that has a problem that was ignored for too long, but he's excellent with animals, and has a reputation among the local vets as a very talented surgeon. His clinic is old, and it's run by just Les and his wife, but he's a good guy once he gets to know you, and is very reasonable in his prices.

He saved one of my dog's life in the past; she had a splinter of a cow bone cut the big artery on the underside of her tongue, and nearly bled to death before I could get her into town. I had already checked her mouth, as she was bleeding very heavily from it, but I failed to see the cut. Les spotted it immediately, stopped the bleeding with 2 stitches, and gave her a transfusion from my other dog. She walked out feeling fine in less than 20 minutes after I carried her in.

I'm sure other vets would have done the same, but his performance was impressive and made a solid customer out of me.

p.s. Any dog can be a blood donor for another dog. That was something I didn't know until then.

[tmp4]

any suggestions on Internet service? seems this thread turned into a Vet thread

I'm growing increasingly frustrated with Century Link. What are you folks using? I'm ready for a change!

[Ret.InAmmon]

I have Cable One, bundled with my HD cable service.
Generally very reliable, with some slow periods during busiest times, but very few actual outages or such.
Streaming of Netflix and Amazon is almost always uneventful, but once in a while (maybe once a month?) we'll get an error and streaming video will halt.

[tmp4]

thank you. I had Cable One internet previously and was fine with it. I'll see if it's available in my neighborhood

[cleosmom]

Originally Posted by tmp4

any suggestions on Internet service? seems this thread turned into a Vet thread

I'm growing increasingly frustrated with Century Link. What are you folks using? I'm ready for a change!

We used to have Cable One, they are overpriced IMO, so switched to Rise... No complaints!

[tmp4]

thanks! I'll check out Rise as well

[DanQuixote]

I have Cableone (100mbps internet only) and in my neighborhood, it's incredibly reliable and consistent. I don't think we've had more than 4 hours total downtime in the 8 years we've had it.

There is a caveat though, if you are a high bandwidth user. For Cable One's most common residential plans, there is a 300gb data cap per month. That may sound huge, but it can get eaten up pretty quickly in a modern household where streaming entertainment is the norm. We have an Amazon fire TV, which auto-detects your bandwidth, and uses as much as it can to give you the best picture possible. On the first day we had the fire TV, it ate down 35gb streaming 5 20 minute episodes of a show my teens were watching. If you're tech savvy, you can limit the bandwidth to such devices in your router setup, but I think the average consumer would find themselves quickly over the limit in such a situation.

So, 300GB cap is probably very generous on a 10mbps connection, but on a 100mbps connection, we have to closely watch our streaming from netflix, youtube, and amazon.

[Mtn. States Resident]

Originally Posted by tmp4

thanks! I'll check out Rise as well

Oh do, if you can get it!

[Mtn. States Resident]

Originally Posted by DanQuixote

I have Cableone (100mbps internet only) and in my neighborhood, it's incredibly reliable and consistent. I don't think we've had more than 4 hours total downtime in the 8 years we've had it.

There is a caveat though, if you are a high bandwidth user. For Cable One's most common residential plans, there is a 300gb data cap per month. That may sound huge, but it can get eaten up pretty quickly in a modern household where streaming entertainment is the norm. We have an Amazon fire TV, which auto-detects your bandwidth, and uses as much as it can to give you the best picture possible. On the first day we had the fire TV, it ate down 35gb streaming 5 20 minute episodes of a show my teens were watching. If you're tech savvy, you can limit the bandwidth to such devices in your router setup, but I think the average consumer would find themselves quickly over the limit in such a situation.

So, 300GB cap is probably very generous on a 10mbps connection, but on a 100mbps connection, we have to closely watch our streaming from netflix, youtube, and amazon.

So Dan, your post interested me greatly. I understand the "data" battle. As more and more educational programs, news, other replays teachers want kids to use to learn, let alone DIY videos, YouTube can eat a chunk of data with nothing special just routine life.

I'm curious how you pro-rated or manage data so homework gets done, DIY projects and other get watched and you have anything left over from Netflix and other? I absolutely think this is the future.

[DanQuixote]

Originally Posted by Mtn. States Resident

So Dan, your post interested me greatly. I understand the "data" battle. As more and more educational programs, news, other replays teachers want kids to use to learn, let alone DIY videos, YouTube can eat a chunk of data with nothing special just routine life.

I'm curious how you pro-rated or manage data so homework gets done, DIY projects and other get watched and you have anything left over from Netflix and other? I absolutely think this is the future.

The single biggest thing is having a modern, full featured router with QoS (quality of service) options. My primary line of defense is video stream throttling. I first ensure that all client (read: Kids) devices are set by default in youtube and netflix to limit video quality to non-hd. Amazon Prime has no similar option for that, forcing me to throttle Amazon at the router. Via the router control panel, I limit the 2 amazon fireTVs we have in the house to 1 mbps. I also end up limiting cell phones/tablets on wifi through the router to 1mbps also. This is enough bandwidth to give smooth video playback, but eats up 100s of MB per hour rather than 10s of GB per hour.

Secondly, I have the router automatically turn off the router from 11pm to 6am. I learned this the hard way when I had an exchange student that would be surreptitiously skyping with friends back home in Europe after bed hours. It took us some time to figure out why she was always so tired.

The third thing we do is check our bandwidth regularly and talk about where we stand as a family. If one user is peaking with a lot more bandwidth, we let them know they're a prime candidate to find either an internet block or a throttling to 200kbps.

We have several world of warcraft gamers in the house too. The bandwidth from game play, although noticeable, pales next to the bandwidth sucked down by an unrestrained FireTV.

I can't wait for the Ammon fiberoptics to roll out. First world problems, I know. The struggle is real.