STAFF REPORT IBD: The National ICT RandD Fund has sought proposals from academia/research institutions, companies, organizations for the development, deployment and operation of a national level URL Filtering and Blocking System.
This system will work as a country firewall and will potentially be able to block the access of any URL throughout the country, an official of the RandD Fund said.
According to RFP (Request for Proposal), available at ICT RandD Fund website, the system should be capable of URL filtering and blocking, from domain level to sub folder, file levels and file types – in addition to have ability of blocking a single IP or range of IPs.
It said that solution should be able to handle bandwidth of 85Gbps, with scalability for 40-50 percent growth every year.
The relevant Pakistani authorities have long urged to have a country-level firewall in place to block specific URLs carrying blasphemous contents.
The official said that the PTA has even asked for quotations for blocking system from international players but couldnt buy the solution due to higher prices.
It merits mentioning here that PTA recently asked ISPs to block as many as 13,000 websites, which were of explicit in nature.

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