Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), a subsidiary of the Indian Railways announced that it has extended the time for e-ticket booking on its portal by 15 minutes - till 11:45pm.
IRCTC said that it had recently imported five new HP Itanium servers from Singapore to speed up e-ticketing operations on its digital platform. Earlier this year, IRCTC had provisioned two Linux servers, substantially raising the booking capacity of e-tickets.
With the introduction of the new system on September 20, IRCTC's main server will be closed for 45 minutes only, IRCTC said in an emailed statement.
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Before the introduction of the new timing, passengers were allowed to book tickets through e-ticketing till 11:30pm, following which IRCTC would shut down its main server for an hour every day - from 11:30pm to 12:30am - for maintenance.
"The introduction of these new high-speed servers has substantially enhanced the website performance, including log-in time and payment gateway, which is why passengers are getting 15 more minutes for e-ticketing service," said Dr. A K Manocha, Chairman and Managing Director, IRCTC.
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The extended time period will also be available to passengers on the 'current counters' at railway stations, where tickets can be booked and cancelled.
IRCTC claims that it has 30 million registered users on the website, and is the world's second busiest, with around 550,000 to 600,000 bookings everyday.
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