Festive rush slows Railways ticket site

The ticketing site (IRCTC.CO.IN) could not open for about 10 minutes in the morning today due to some network problem, said a senior IRCTC official.

Normally, about 60,000 tickets are booked during the 10 am and 12 am, the peak hour for Tatkal ticket booking, everyday. "However, about 53,000 tickets were booked today during this hour due to the problem," the official said.

Ticketing agents are barred from booking tickets during 10 am to 12 am.

The official said "the site has the capacity to take the load of 10 lakh hits at a time but the concurrent hits increased to more than 12 lakh this time, causing the slowdown."

The site had also developed problem last week before Diwali.

"We are taking three steps to prevent slowdown of the site during the rush hour," said the official adding "first we are upgrading the software, secondly adding new servers and then efforts are also being made to increase the concurrent connection capacity, so that the site can take the load of upto 30 lakh hits at any given time."

There are about three lakh tickets booked online in a day.