IRCTC adds two new servers to ease tatkal bookings

Railways food catering and tourism promotion firm, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), on Friday said that it has upgraded its website by introducing two high capacity servers that have doubled peak time efficiency.

According to the IRCTC, its portal installed two Linux-enabled servers on June 1, 2015 raising the booking capacity to over 14,000 tickets per minute from the existing 7,200.

IRCTC Chairman and Managing Director A.K. Manocha said the capacity augmentation has been done as an "immediate step" to cater to the summer time demand for tatkal tickets and a forenoon flurry in their online reservations.

"The measure is vital, considering that 54 percent train tickets in the country are booked through IRCTC website," Manocha cited.

On an average the daily sale of train tickets through the portal, which is the world's second busiest with three crore registered users, is around 5.5 to 6 lakh.

The 16-year-old 'mini Ratna' public sector undertaking of the Indian Railways had introduced e-ticketing in 2002 through its digital platform.

The website was first upgraded in end-April last year, facilitating 1,50,000 concurrent connections or users at any given time and the ability to entertain 1,000 enquiries per second.

"Even that was later found insufficient, given the summer time rush for tatkal tickets - especially in premium trains plying between the most sought after destinations," pointed out Manocha.

With the addition of the two new servers, IRCTC now has 17 servers.

The tatkal reservations on all Indian Railways trains total roughly around 400,000 tickets. Of these, 50,000 tickets are slotted 'critical', given their high demand owing to various reasons during a given season.