Connect is a team of hard workers and pushovers, who are determined to establish an elite network services spectrum on metropolitan level. Connect have a mission to build a stronghold for various network services on local link, such as super nodes, msn and other utilities to provide maximum performance and high scalability to take full advantage of gigabit network. Connect is determined to provide state of the art broadband communication to each household and business entity on a very low cost.

Now Connect Communications offers following services;

1. Household; Connect Communications provides shared bandwidth packages to households with dynamic public IP address. The connectivity is provided through Ethernet backhauled with Optical Fiber to Connect's Network Operation Center.

2. Corporate; Connect Communications provides 128 Kbps and higher CIR circuits to corporate customers over Ethernet backhauled on Optical Fiber to Network Operation Center.

A metropolitan area network (MAN) is a network that interconnects users with computer resources in a geographic area or region larger than that covered by even a large local area network (LAN) but smaller than the area covered by a wide area network (WAN). The term is applied to the interconnection of networks in a city into a single larger network (which may then also offer efficient connection to a wide area network). It is also used to mean the interconnection of several local area networks by bridging them with backbone lines.

A household account/service is a package defined for a user, who would use the internet services at home for entertainment and education purpose. Household accounts are not meant for mission critical or task critical business usage, for which a corporate CIR account is required with relativity higher uptime, backup support and Service Level Agreement.

Connect Communications is the only service provider, which offers significantly higher data throughput with public IP (WAN Interface). Connect Communications is the largest network of Karachi Pakistan, and the only such extensively large network, which is constantly involved in research and development to improve service level and introduce value added bundled services.

The both type of services, Corporate and Household account/service can be subject to outage due to any technical issue or sabotage of optical fiber link. In such cases, Connect Communications’ technical team is on duty 24/7 to resolve any type of issue at the earliest possible. The corporate accounts usually have a backup link as part of SLA, which provide them connectivity during such outage. The household accounts are designed for extremely low cost service and therefore they only have backup facility over the optical fiber multiple rings within city but no any other type of media or backup link is available for each individual or small locality.

Your PC (Personal Computer) health directly affects the quality of service for you internet. Your PC must be free of any Virus, Trojans, Worms and Spy-ware in order to enjoy your Internet/network related services. It is highly recommended that you installed Anti-virus, Anti-Spyware and any other reliable security software to protect your PC from all malicious software, which may cause interruption in services, indecently impersonated emails to friends and much worse your data loss.

A very old PC with very low configuration will also cause hassle in enjoying your Internet/network services.

Yes, you can use WiFi with Connect Communications services, but you are advised to contact your local dealer or Connect Communications' technical support before installing or provisioning any WiFi access point. The most recommended type of WiFi access point is "Bridge Mode", since they are low in cost and does not require any specific settings, in fact they are almost plug and play type.

The access point with "Routing Mode" are the one, which cause problem and requires specific settings. The unguided installation of such access point can cause outage in service not only for you but also for users in closer proximity of your location.

However, Connect Communications reserves the rights to temporarily or permanently deactivate or disable service for a user causing problem by installing "Routing Mode" access point on connect network.

Generally, PCs broadcast some packets or traffic to coordinate or communicate with other PCs on same network. Sometimes this broadcast is generated in huge volume from a PC due to any virus or malicious software or a electrical short circuit in the network interface card, commonly known as "NIC" or "LAN Card".

Such broadcast causes interruption or outage in service to the particular segment of network. Therefore, it is advised to insure the health of your PC.

These are all malicious software, which cause interruption and outage in internet services and in addition can damage or delete any software application or personal data.

The email spamming is a technique of bombarding thousands of emails to thousands of users at a time. Usually this technique is used by sales or marketing firms trying to convey their message with products. The email spamming can also be generated by a malicious software installed in your PC, these type of software impersonate as you and automatically send emails to various users randomly or from your address book. The virus generated spamming usually contains indecent contents to harm or embarrass you in front of your friends and relatives. Please insure you PC health to avoid such issues.

In any case, deliberate or none-deliberate spamming is consider illegal and offensive activity, which could cause any legal complication for the email spammer.

The popup blocker is a utility, which can be installed upon a internet browser to block any unwanted popup windows. According to your settings of popup blocker, you can choose weather to allow or disallow any popup from a specific website. The popup from any unknown and less reputed websites usually contain indecent contents or malicious scripts.

The most dangerous ports, which are used by most of the viruses and other malicious software, are;

    1. 135 to 139 (TCP & UDP Both)
    2. 445 (TCP & UDP Both)
    3. 1433 to 1434 (TCP & UDP Both)
    4. 6667 (TCP & UDP Both)

The above mentioned ports are blocked on network to reduce the chances of various malicious attacks and spread. Any P2P or other network applications using these ports are not allowed on Connect Communications network. The list of ports can change with time accordingly.

On the Internet, peer-to-peer (referred to as P2P) is a type of transient Internet network that allows a group of computer users with the same networking program to connect with each other and directly access files from one another's hard drives. Napster and Gnutella are examples of this kind of peer-to-peer software. Major producers of content, including record companies, have shown their concern about what they consider illegal sharing of copyrighted content by suing some P2P users.

Meanwhile, corporations are looking at the advantages of using P2P as a way for employees to share files without the expense involved in maintaining a centralized server and as a way for businesses to exchange information with each other directly.

Not all P2P applications are harmful, but it solely depends upon the user while using such P2P applications, that how he/she uses this utility. Sharing data with trusted users generally cause no issues. Otherwise, it is advised to be very careful while accepting any type of contents from an unknown user. Some of the P2P applications have played a vital role in spreading malicious software. Connect Communications does not allow such P2P applications which are or can be harmful for any connect Communications' user.

The network gamming is the term used for such games, which are played by multiple users at a time, using network as connection between all players. Generally a network service provider facilitates game servers for users to login and play across the network.

The users themselves can also build and use games servers on their own. The only difference in network service provider facilitated games servers and users’ owned game server is the accessibility across network.

The Connect Communications provides a dialer to the users for using internet, the idea of providing dialer is to take advantages, from which some are useful for Connect Communications and some are useful to users. The dialer provides connect to manage each user individually for accounts and bandwidth allocation. Where as user take advantage of dedicated management of bandwidth to its particular user id and dynamic delivery of Public IP and WAN interface.

Connect Communications have an automated logging and tracking system, which keeps the records of user id and Public IP address. The Government of Islamic Republic of Pakistan requires this feature. The logs are only provided to Government’s authorized law enforcement agencies upon any illegal activity performed by a particular user. It is advised to Connect Communications' users to safeguard the user id and do not share it with any unknown or less trusted person.

The Internet Download Manager is a utility which provides resume facility for any progressive download. A user can choose to download any particular content and temporarily pause the downloading and resume later on his/her ease.

Just installing Anti-Virus software and any other security related software is not enough, as new virus and malicious software are constantly be produced and transferred to computer through various means. It is necessary to update all security related software regularly.

Any DNS server that contains a complete copy of the domain's zone file is considered to be authoritative for that domain. A complete copy of a zone file must have: 

• a valid Start of Authority (SOA) record,
• valid Name Server (NS) records for the domain, and
• the listed NS records should match the servers listed in the SOA record.

Servers listed in the zone file, but not in the SOA record are called lame servers and these should be avoided. It is considered standard practice to have a primary authoritative DNS server and one or more secondary authoritative DNS servers. When registering your domain with an accredited domain name registrar, the primary authoritative DNS server is the server you list first, all other DNS servers you list will be secondary. The secondary server and the primary server should be on different IP subnets and the hardware should be located in different physical locations. By putting the two DNS servers on different subnets and placing them apart geographically, you greatly reduce the risk that a single outage will take down the entire system of DNS servers for your domain. Having more than one secondary DNS server for your domain is also good practice, but you can only designate one primary DNS server with your registrar because the DNS can only point to a single primary DNS server for your domain.

DNS Servers can be configured to host more than one domain. A server can be primary for one domain, and secondary for another. The term authoritative refers to any DNS servers that has a complete copy of the domain's information, whether it was entered by an administrator or transferred from a primary server. Thus, a secondary server can and should be authoritative for any domain for which it performs secondary resolution.

Note that if a secondary server loses contact with the primary server for a domain, it will stop being an authoritative server after a timeout period (usually a few days).

Any response to a DNS query that originates from a DNS server with a complete copy of the zone file is said to be an 'authoritative response'. What complicates matters is that DNS servers cache the answers they receive. If a DNS server has an SOA record, it fills in a field in the response that signals that the server queried is authoritative for the domain and that the answer is authoritative. Any DNS server external to that domain that retrieved the authoritative response will cache that answer. The next time the server is queried, it will say that theanswer it is giving is authoritative, even though the server itself is not authoritative for that domain.

In other words, it is possible for a DNS server that isnot an authoritative server for a domain to give an 'authoritative response' to a DNS query.

Non Authoritative servers do not contain copies of any domains. Instead they have a cache file that is constructed from all the DNS lookups they have performed in the past for which they have gotten an authoritative response and for which the response has not "timed-out."

When a non-authoritative server queries an authoritative server and receives an authoritative answer, it passes that answer along to the querent as an authoritative answer. Thus, non-authoritative servers can answer authoritatively for a given DNS request. However, if another request comes for a different name in the same domain, they can't answer without asking an authoritative server for that domain.

Most often, a non-authoritative server answers with a previous lookup from its lookup cache. Any answer retrieved from the cache of any server is deemed non-authoritative because it did not come from an authoritative server.

Non-authoritative responses comes from DNS servers that have cached an answer for a given host, but received that information from a server that is not authoritative for the domain.