The ongoing rush for ‘tatkal’ tickets during the Diwali season in India caused the government’s online booking website IRCTC to crash on November 14, 2012. The website crashed just a day before the festival of Bhai Dooj and four days before the Chhath festival.
The IRCTC website crashed for about five minutes on Wednesday shortly after bookings started, as a result many people trying to travel out of Delhi missed being with their relatives.
According to reports the website received 13 lakh visitors in one go, normally the site can only handle around 10 to 12 lakh simultaneous visitors. However, the servers was back within a few minutes and downtime was restricted. The website immediately began damage control measures and the IRCTC said that it was increasing its load bearing capacity and will be able handle up to 30 lakh hits a minute by the end of the next three months.
An IRCTC spokesperson said, “We are aware of the problems though they affected our website for just a few minutes. We are working on a slew of measures to address the issue. We hope to improve the situation by the end of the winter break”. The website also faced a few problems last week. Every day about three lakh tickets are booked online.
