Meeting on the .PK Future at PTA Headquaters

The dot PK Hullabaloo


Someone once quipped that the best workers in the world were Pakistanis and the worst ones were Pakistanis working in a group. I couldn't agree more. Not directly connected to this is Rodney King's quote that was caught on tape as ruthless L.A.P.D. officers beat him "Can't we all get along?". With Pakistani mind, there could be more serious fundamental questions like "Why in the hell do I want to get along?" or "Who the f*** are you to tell me to get along?". Sigh.

Ashar Nisar, from UET 82 session, and of course my university senior has been running PKNIC, the company that manages Pakistan's top level Domain .PK since the last sixteen years.

First, back in the 1980s, Pakistan Telecomunications Company (ala PTCL) tried it's garangutan ego to 'save' the PK domain from a Pakistani working out of the US. Thank God that PTCL failed. Hmmm... we never hear of PTCL's successes do we :-)

After a while, the National Telecommunications Corporation (NTC) caught the same virus of conquering the .PK domain. Thank God that they failed miserably as well. NTC quotes 'national security' concerns for bringing the .PK 'back home'. 'Masud Saab, we are very concerned about National Security and what the Americans could do if they changed the records of the .PK TLD in the US' said a Colonel. 'But Colonel....are the Americans going to do it', I asked. 'Well they could', he said. 'Yes, Colonel. And what if they screw the Root Servers controlling the .net, .com, .org and other Top Level Domain?. That would affect the whole world!'. Seeing that I was not impressed with his argument, he quickly changed the topic. Had NTC got the .PK domain, I can bet that the turn around time for a process that took one minute would have gone to a year!!

Finally, Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) woke up and realized what a great golden-egg-laying chick the PKNIC was. So far so good. The .PK TLD is still controlled and maintained by PKNIC. What does a regulator have to do with something like a .PK TLD?

At the meeting called by PTA on the topic, I was surprised by the ignorance of the people from public and even IT companies who did not have a clue to how the Domain Name System (DNS) worked. One person quipped... 'NADRA ka sara data PKNIC say paas ho kay jaata hay' (all data of the National Database passes through PKNIC). On hearing this, I seriously looked around to find a wall to bang my head against it :-). Strangely enough, the PTA clock showed the GMT+5 timezone whereas PTA ordered the whole nation to switch to the GMT+6 timezone at Midnight of 1st June, 2008. A legless man teaching running :-)

The PTA Clock... An hour behind the nation

Coming back to Why can't we all get along? paradigm, why can't we just let PKNIC run the .PK domain. Can't we just a moment appreciate the good that a person or company is doing?

Seriously, we need to learn to give credit where credit is due. Lets at least pretend to have a big heart!