IRCTC Plans Major Upgrade To Tackle Website Crashes During Peak Booking Hours

In order to enhance the online booking experience and minimise website interruptions during busy hours, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) intends to modernise its ticket booking system. The proposed enhancements are intended to improve system stability, handle heavy traffic, and facilitate smoother rail ticket purchases.

Nowadays, about 89% of reserved train tickets are purchased online. Of the 65.08 crore reserved tickets that passengers purchased through the PRS between June 2025 and June 2026, 57.90 crore were purchased online.

IRCTC upgrades NGET system to reduce booking delays

The IRCTC website has occasionally experienced delays due to heavy usage during peak booking hours, such as the 8 a.m. beginning of the Advance Reservation Period (ARP) and Tatkal booking, which begins at 10 a.m. for AC class and 11 a.m. for non-AC class. IRCTC is updating its Next Generation e-Ticketing (NGET) system, which was introduced in 2014 to enhance online ticket booking capacity and the traveller experience, in an effort to reduce such issues.

IRCTC stated in a statement that it is developing two significant changes to enhance its app and website. The first is an overhaul of the NGET infrastructure, which involves improvements to networking, servers, storage, and software.

The second is an active-active disaster recovery system designed to maintain operations in the event of a system failure. This is crucial during busy booking times, when even a one- or two-minute interruption can affect travellers, according to IRCTC.

IRCTC further added,

“We are trying to go for an active-active disaster recovery, because sometimes if the website is down, then the passengers will have to face problems, and we are very much behind that one minute or two minutes. This becomes the golden hour for us. If we have a disaster recovery, most probably coming up at Secunderabad.” 

Four significant changes have been made to the IRCTC beta website since its launch on July 15. These include fewer unnecessary CAPTCHAs and pop-ups, seat availability across all classes, fewer steps during checkout, and the ability to save passenger details for faster repeat bookings.

IRCTC strengthens systems to manage peak booking traffic

In order to prevent unauthorised and suspicious users from jamming the website during peak booking hours, specifically at 8 a.m., 10 a.m., and 11 a.m., IRCTC stated that it has enhanced its systems. To manage website traffic, the organisation also uses Akamai for content delivery and bot mitigation.

IRCTC said,

“We have built a regimen other than employing Akamai, who does the bot mitigation and CDN delivery, content delivery network, by offloading the static content, and other agencies who try to ensure that these scurries do not come in. We have built a regimen in which the time limit has increased from 15 minutes of non-usage of this website by the agents to now 30 minutes,” IRCTC said.