Few months back, we shared the good news that Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) now offers CoD for tickets booked online. Today, there’s some more good news! IRCTC has imported five new high-capacity servers from Singapore to improve e-ticketing operations.
These servers are expected to phenomenally change the way passengers book tickets on its digital platform. This comes close on the heels of IRCTC introducing two new high-speed servers earlier this month that have doubled peak-time efficiency for booking Tatkal tickets in the morning hours.
Dr A K Manocha, IRCTC Chairman and Managing Director said that the five new HP Itanium servers to be installed shortly in the middle layer of the Passenger Reservation System (PRS) would considerably speed up the booking of e-tickets and streamline the Next Generation E-Ticketing System (NGET). He added, “there are already five servers in the PRS at its middle layer. With the addition of five new servers from Singapore, their number would go up to ten.”
The Addl GM (Software) of IRCTC, Mr. M.Srinivas MS said that the introduction of five new high-speed servers would substantially enhance the website performance. He continued, “the entire procedure of e-ticketing will get a facelift with improvement in website’s efficiency, log-in time and payment gateway.”
He also pointed out that with the introduction of these 5 new servers from Singapore, not only will the number of concurrent users will go up from the existing 180,000 to 300,000 but the existing capacity to book around 15,000 tickets per minute will also go up considerably.
Moreover, IRCTC is also planning to increase its network bandwidth from the existing 1.4 GB to 1.7 GB in order to enhance the performance of e-ticketing operations. IRCTC, earlier on June 1, had installed two Linux-enabled servers, substantially raising the booking capacity of e-tickets, much to the relief of passengers jostling for tatkal reservation which faces heavy rush in its first 15 minutes since 10 am when the service opens every day.
The fact that 54 per cent train tickets in the country are booked through the IRCTC website, the servers being installed is going to be vital. The average daily sale of train tickets through the portal, which is the world’s second busiest with 3 crore registered users, is around 5.5 to 6 lakh. It has registered a record 14,800 tickets per minute.
All we hope for now is that is gets started at the earliest. The bookings are going to be way too easier then!
