A few years ago PTCL decided that they wanted to get into the broadband Internet Service Provider (ISP) game. PTCL being PTCL they went about it in the only manner they could. They had this huge phone network with questionable infrastructure. And they didn’t really have the right personnel. But they had financial muscle and an almost monopoly on international bandwidth. So they advertised heavily offering lower rates and higher speeds than their competitors. It worked for them. They got lots and lots of customers. Some of them even happy ones.
International payment methods for Pakistan: SWIFT wire transfer
Sending money abroad and receiving payments from foreign companies or individuals is surprisingly difficult in Pakistan. There are many factors that come into play including the cost of the payment method, time it takes to transfer the amount and acceptability of the payment method to the foreign party. In this post I look at SWIFT wire transfer and discuss its advantages and disadvantages. Continue reading
CentOS Linux: Setting timezone and synchronizing time with NTP
Learn how to set the correct timezone and synchronize time with NTP servers on your CentOS box.
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UBL wiz card review
One of the biggest problems facing webmasters from Pakistan is the lack of an easy payment method for purchasing services online. Specifically, an easy payment method for buying webhosting and domain names. Credit cards are difficult to come by. Debit cards are easier to get, but most of them don’t work online. Not even a VISA logo guarantees that a debit card will work online in Pakistan! So I was very happy when I heard that a Pakistani bank was issuing an Internet capable prepaid debit card. That was over 2 years ago, and in this post I share my experience with using the UBL wiz Visa card online
Apache optimization: KeepAlive On or Off?
Apache is the most widely used web server on the Internet. Knowing how to get the most out of Apache is very important for a systems administrator. Optimizing Apache is always a balancing act. It’s a case of sacrificing one resource in order to obtain savings in another.