Mairi Manzil

Blog about Business, Technology, Education & Training, Career, Sport, Health, Fitness and Lifestyle

Latest Post
December 25, 2017
, ,
Twitter Facebook

I decided to attend Boston Marathon in 2017 but didn't attend the marathon because of several reasons. Therefore I thought to run a race in Pakistan.

Why not Boston Marathon?


 There were several reasons for not attending Boston Marathon, and one of the reasons was I was very late to decide if I have to attend that or not and second reason was my timing. Yes that is true, qualifying time was 3:30 minutes and I am sure that time is not possible for me. Therefore, I had no choice than running Marathon in Pakistan.

Bahria Town Marathon - Karachi Pakistan
Karrachi Marathon was conducted by irunforsmile and
main sponsor were Bahria Town Karachi. Bahria Town helped to organize the event and there were many volunteers who supported this event.

 Shamp was the main sponsor who funded heavily for this race. 

Pakistani and Foreigner athletes participated in this event.

The route map for the Bahria Town Karachi is below, it almost cover Bahria town Karachi.

December 08, 2014
Twitter Facebook

Network Security Policy is crucial in today's age and having them implemented in organization where you are working is essential. Depending upon the structure of your department. Network security policy should be written by Network Security professional, though it is specific to the organization you are working for but below template will give basic idea of how it has to be written.

Network / Internet Security Policy Template

All users who use the IT Service (the “employees,” “guests,” “you,” or “your”) of Mairi Manzil Group must provide a correct user ID and password to access the Network resources, file server and Internet.
The following are violations of this agreement:
  • Unauthorized copying of data, files and software either belongs to Mairi Manzil Group or any other person’s personal.
  • threatening of bodily harm or the threat of property damage to groups or individuals;
  • making or taking part in fraudulent offers or products, items or services originating from your account;
  • attempting to access accounts of anyone other than your own, attempting to penetrate (“hacking”) security measures of Company, whether or not the intrusion results in data corruption or loss;
  • the unauthorized use of a person’s name or likeness;
  • Access any other person’s computer or computer system, network, software, or data without his or her knowledge and consent; breach the security of another user or system; or attempt to circumvent the user authentication or security of any host, network, or account. This includes, but is not limited to, accessing data not intended for you, logging into or making use of a server or account you are not expressly authorized to access, or probing the security of other hosts, networks, or accounts without express permission to do so;
  • use or distribute tools or devices designed or used for compromising security or whose use is otherwise unauthorized, such as password guessing programs, decoders, password gatherers, keystroke loggers, analyzers, cracking tools, packet sniffers, encryption circumvention devices, or Trojan Horse programs. Unauthorized port scanning is strictly prohibited;
  • interfere with computer networking or telecommunications service to any user, host or network, including, without limitation, denial of service attacks, flooding of a network, overloading a service, improper seizing and abusing operator privileges, and attempts to “crash” a host;
  • assist others in engaging in prohibited conduct;
  • send or receive any material that could be considered harmful, obscene, pornographic, indecent, lewd, violent, abusive, profane, insulting, threatening, tortuous, harassing, hateful or otherwise objectionable without explicit written consent;

Spam Policy

  • send “spam,” chain letters, or other unsolicited communications to any party;
  • Forward messages.
  • posting or emailing of scams or “get rich quick” schemes, pyramid type or chain letters, subscribing others to a mailing list without their prior consent or knowledge or approval;
  • disseminate viruses, Trojan horses, or other code or programming intended to damage, interfere with, intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information;
  • Harassing others by “mail-bombs”. Mail bombing is here defined as the sending of more than 10 like messages to the same address or by the sending of more than 10 MB of data to a newsgroup. The sending of unsolicited email messages where the recipient objects to the content of the material sent;
  • send or receive any material that harasses, victimizes, degrades, or intimidates an individual or group of individuals on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, age, or disability;
  • send or receive material containing defamatory, false, or libelous material;
  • send or receive any material that you do not have a right to make available under law or contractual or fiduciary relationships;
  • Bandwidth Usage
  • Streaming is prohibited unless it is official.
  • Downloading personal data, video and audio files is not allowed.
  • Downloading files more than 20MB (personal or private) is not allowed.

change in policy

ICT Department does not routinely monitor the activity of individual accounts for violations of this Policy, except for determining aggregate data consumption in connection with the data consumption provisions of this Policy. Department has no obligation to monitor the Service and/or the network. However, Mairi Manzil Group reserve the right at any time to monitor bandwidth, usage, transmissions, and content in order to ; identify violations of this Policy; and/or protect the network, the Service and Company users.

WiFi Security Measures

Though our network has SSID with WPA Encryption, but it doesn't mean the network is well protected we need to ensure access to our network is provided only to Authorized users, therefore any new device to be registered with the Company which will have the following important updates on our System;
  • Device Registration : Device's MAC Address to be registered in DHCP Server so the allowed IP range is provided, this depends which VLAN the user will be accessing or the device will only access the Internet, then the mac address to be registered in firewall as well as in Wireless Lan Controller.
  • De-Registration : Device to be automatically de-registered from (DHCP, Firewall and Wireless Lan Controller) if device is not seen on network for more than 30 days. 
  • Login Credentials : All the users of Mari Manzil Group will be provided login credentials to access network resources, SSO is also in place which means that most of the services and resources will be accessed through the same login detail. 

BYOD and Company WiFi

Wi-Fi Service is available to only company provided Devices, however if it is required to use personal Equipment’s a BYOD policy is applicable and you need to get permission from your HOD to get the service.
No spamming is allowed. If it is a marketing related email, only marketing department will be allowed to use email tool which IT Department can provide, Management has allowed Head Of Departments to send email to mailing list if it is required to send everyone you may contact your respective Head of Department, Anyone sending mass mailed messages to more than 30 recipients will be considered spammers. Spamming is defined as sending unwanted, unsolicited email to those who have not requested or invited the message. In no way does Company provide open relaying services to users not within our network. 

Violations of this Policy:

Users need to be aware that the WiFi doesn’t mean internet, when you connect with WiFi it means you are connecting with company servers and resources and Internet is used for accessing company emails and other cloud services however if you use internet you need to make sure that the purpose of Internet is to connect to remote company locations for example from remote locations to head office and head office internet is to enable branches to connect with servers, so it is important to take care of Internet bandwidth as below;

Below techniques will be used to allow access to network resources
Media Access Controller Address, it is a unique identified of network interface card of each network device, in order to get access to network this address should be provided to Department to add to the list of allowed networks and if device is no more property of employee they must inform IT to enable them to remove from the list.

Desktops and laptops are already supplied with USER ID and Password however the BYOD doesn’t have one so it is important to have user ID and password when accessing Internet and network resources using WiFi and this user ID and password must not be shared with anyone to access the network user ID and password needs to be entered and if device is idle then device will be automatically disconnected.

The policy is specific to Mairi Manzil Group, however, this purely depends on latest threats of the time when you need to write the policy. But the policy Audit is also must, mainly CISSP or CISA professionals will help you to know if policy addresses all the important areas of Network and Internet Security. Most of the companies also write the Security Policy in general that covers Network, Data, Physical, Logical, Computer, Servers, Users and Internet etc. But it totally depends on size of company. You can consider this policy as the subset of overall network security policy.

October 21, 2012
Twitter Facebook

GITEX is an IT Exhibition which is organized in Dubai UAE every year since 1981. GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK builds upon the global interest in the Middle East's ICT landscape by
presenting a power-packed week of 12 dedicated trade segments, which includes SME Zone,International Zone, Hardware, Software, Networking & Security, Gulfcomms, Cloud Confex, Consumer Tech, Card Tech, Digital Marketing, Government and Mobile Apps & Content World. It was organized by Dubai World Trade Center. Not only exhibition Conferences are also arrange for IT Strategies, cloud confex etc.
gitex-technology-week-2012

This year the  15th October to 18th October, 2012


Main Sponsors


  • VOCALCOM
  • TRA ( Telecommunication Regulatory Authority)
  • Other Sponsers
  • Genius, Ford, Symantec, Microsoft
  • HP, Dell, intel, Gemalto, SAP, TIE
  • STC, ITP, Jeune Afrique, CommeMEA

Key Technologies

  • Disaster Recovery Products
  •  NAS Server (Ready NAS and Network Storage Devices)
  • IT Support Tools
  • Thin Clients
  •  Network Performance Management tools
  • HR and Payroll Systems
  • ERP Solutions
  •  Software Solutions.
  • VPN & Firewall
  • Wireless Network Devices


Business and IT, and being responsible for this role it is responsibility to check the latest trend in the  Market for Information & Technology. Software and Hardware Solutions and New Trends inTelecommunication sector. IT Managers should mainly visit to know about latest Software, Cloud, Mobile apps, Digital Marketing, Software, Hardware, rinting, Card Tech, Network and security. 

This year mainly Barcoding and RFID Systems, Conference Room Automation, Digital Markeing, Clouds, Mobile Apps, Network Security were featured mainly.


Following were they key technologies sections showcased in Gitext Software, Cloud, Mobile apps, Digital Marketing, Software, Hardware, Card Tech, Network Security,  Thin Clients, smart computing.

In business section solutions like ERPs, MIS, DSS, Management Dashboards and other Networking Solutions were the key features. Other solutions were still trendy like  ERPs, Business Solutions on Tablets and Mobile Phones, Automated Ordering Terminals, 3D Techs, Office and Conference Room Automation, Advance Structured cabling using Fiber and  Integrated Audio Video Solutions.

Top most liked solutions by our team were;
Business drives IT and aligning IT with Business is responsibility of IT professionals, therefore it is necessary to get up to date knowledge of latest trends. Visiting Exhibitions like GITEX will help the professional to gain more knowledge on latest trends and techs. Visit my latest post for current GITEX updates.

March 10, 2011
Twitter Facebook


PBX (Private Branch Exchange) is a small telephone switch that is used to establish connections among the internal telephones of a private organization. PBX reduces the overall cost of telephony in a company by reducing the total number of telephone lines they need to lease from the telephone company. Without a PBX a company needs to lease one telephone line for every employee with a telephone. The company only needs to lease as many lines from the telephone company as the telephone company as maximum number of employees that will be making outside calls at one time. It is nearly 10% of the number of extensions.
In a PBX system, every telephone is wired to the PBX. When an employee takes the receiver off hook and dials the outside access code, the PBX connects the employee to an outside line. The enterprise-class PBX including directory-based voicemail, conference calling, integrated messaging, interactive voice response (IVR), three-way calling, caller ID, and call queues.  These packages are provided at no cost and enjoy support from users who provide product support.. Please read more for pabx software;

1. Asterisk

Asterisk performs all the functions of a traditional telephone system and much more. Essentially it is an open source PBX system. It includes a host of features such as voicemail and call conferencing. With Asterisk software telephony hardwareand a common PC, anyone can replace an existing switch or complement a PBX by adding VoiceOverIP, voicemail, conferencing and several other capabilities. The PBX systems integrates with analog phones and most standards-based IP telephone handsets and software.
Asterix not only reduces the cost of traditional telecommunication technology and operation it also moves the voice over IP, VoIP, to the mainstream. Asterisk integrates pre-existing analog telephone network with the benefit of IP technology, reduce costs.

2. sipX

sipX is an open source voice over IP PBX software.  The main features of sipX is software implementation of the Session Initiation Protocol(SIP) that makes an IP based communication system (IP PBX). The design of sipX deviates from the traditional Asterisk. sipX includes features such as voice mail, interactive voice response systems, auto attendants and the like.  It looks like Asterisk isn't the only open source PBX game in town anymore. sipX, as the name implies, is a SIP-only PBX project released under the LGPL. A noteworthy feature is the inclusion of an out-of-the-box

3. Elastix

This is an open source Unified Communications Server software that is offered with IP PBX, email, faxing and collaboration functionality. The Web interface includes capabilities such as Call Center software with predictive dialing. Elastix integrates several software packages each including their own set of features. Elastix adds new interface for controlling and reporting. Elsastix offers Call recording, Voicemail and Voicemail-to-Email functionality, flexible IVR configurable by web interface, voice synthesis support, extension batch tool to generate large number of extensions using CSV files, integrated Echo Canceller. Phone provisioner, configurable via a web interface. It allows configuration of a large number of IP phones in a short time for supported phones.   It features a web interface and includes capabilities such as call center software with predictive dialing. The Elastix functionality is based on open sourceprojects and offers PBX, fax, instant messaging and email functions.

4. FreeSwitch

FreeSwitch is a scalable open source cross-platform telephony platform designed to route and interconnect popular communication protocols using audio, video, text or any other form of media.  FreeSWITCH offers support to various stable telephony platform on which many telephony applications can be developed using a wide range of free tools. It was originally designed and implemented by focus on several design goals including modularity, cross-platform support, scalability and stability. FreeSWITCH offers many advanced SIP features such as presence/BLF/SLA as well as TCP TLS and sRTP. It can also be used as a transparent proxy with and without media in the path to act as a SBC (session border controller) and proxy T.38 and other end to end protocols.

5. OpenPBX ( CallWeaver )

OpenPBX.org is an open source PBX in software for the Linux Operating System. Open.org is licensed under GPL. The features includes modular architecture, native support for Sangoma TDM cards, integrated faxing and eventually integrated messaging.

6. CallButler

This is a free Windows-based open source PBX, IVR and Auto-Attendant Phone System built on .NET. It is a commercially available product, but is now being put into Open Source. CallButler features Text to Speech, Find Me/Follow Me, Call Forwarding/Transfer, Call Recording, Conferencing, Call Personalization and Unified Messaging, CRM/SFA/ERP/Database Integration.

7. VoicePulse VoIP Service

VoicePulse for Business offers PBX installer and reseller channel for commercial businesses and wholesalers. The VoicePulse services are compatible with PBX clients like Digium's Asterisk, AsteriskNow, Switchvox, Fonality's PBXtra, trixbox, PBX-in-a-Flash, FreePBX, or FreeSwitch. It is a Asterisk-based systems that allow users to instantly activate new numbers, have active fail overs protection for numbers individually and view inventory of numbers.

8. CoreDial VoiceAxis 3.0

CoreDial's VoiceAxis 3.0 software platform offers Service Providers and Interconnects to sell, provision, manage and invoice hosted PBX, VoIP, SIP trunking and related services for business and residential customers. This turnkey package is a software package targeted to enterprise-level business and service providers. The open source PBX software has been designed for the  management, billing and provisioning of hosted PBX. It's a one stop management tool that Asterik users can take to, for its ease of use. VoiceAxis management software can be used by medium to large enterprises to implement a cost effective feature rich, scalable Asterisk PBX solution.

9.  Digium Switchvox SMB 4.5

Digium is a creator of Asterisk, which makes the platform available in a variety of ways both as a free code and as a value-added telephony and platform packages for businesses. The company is seeing the most traction with Switchvox. Its major products are IP PBXes geared for SMBs. The Switchvox, SMB 4.5 adds phone feature packs that brings functions such as call recording and visual voice mail directly to compatible handsets as opposed to being available only from the web. They were in previous Switchvox additions.

10. Fonality trixbox Pro

This open source PBX is the business version of its IP-PBX software trixbox. The Pro Pro Standard Edition (SE), Enteprise Edition (EE), Call Center Edition (CCE) and Unified Agent Edition (UAE). Fonality uses what it calls a hybrid-hosted architecture - a split, hosted plus premise model. It includes free VoIP calling and monitoring like most traditional solutions to provide. It also offers the PSTN connectivity and call privacy that you'd like to find in more traditional PSTN set-up.  Fonality uses the Asterisk-based PBXtra
November 23, 2010
Twitter Facebook


Network-attached storage (NAS) is a hard disk storage system  it includes RAID Configuration which is helpful for fault tolerance and gives maximum protection and security of data, NAS has its own LAN IP address rather than being attached to the department computer that is serving applications to a network's workstation users. It has it's own software for configuring and mapping file locations to the network attached devices. A NAS can be included as part of a more comprehensive solution like SAN (Storage Area Network)
NAS and SAN are different things, we can say NAS can be a part of SAN. 

Commercial NAS:

There are many Expensive NAS Systems e.g; WD, Iomega, LG, NetGear, QNAP, etc etc.
I will not recommend to go for the above expensive systems, I have used some of these but the problem in these systems is that there is only Hard Disk which is main hardware and the machine is having poor performance some are using USB Connections for Hard disks, so I suggust you can create your own NAS instead of buying above expensive systems for this you can use your computer with  some hard disks and OpenSource Operating Systems e.g.

This Blog will explain you how FreeNas will be Installed and Configured 

FreeNAS - Your Network Storage

FreeNAS is an embedded open source NAS  based on freeBSD, it supports popular protocols like CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, TFTP, AFP, RSYNC, Unison, iSCSI (initiator and target) and UPnP.
It supports Software RAID (0,1,5), ZFS, disk encryption, S.M.A.R.T/email monitoring with a WEB configuration interface FreeNAS can be installed on Compact Flash/USB key, hard drive or booted from LiveCD.

FreeNas Video Tutorial

This is complete Training Video of FreeNas

Openfiler Installation Video

This is complete Training Video of Openfiler


System Requirements : 
- System with CD ROM
- 512MB Ram or More
- 256 MB Compact Flash or Flash Disk
- IDE or SATA Hard Disk 

Contact Form

Name

Email *

Message *

Powered by Blogger.
Javascript DisablePlease Enable Javascript To See All Widget