IRCTC is implementing two major upgrades to its website and app to reduce disruptions during peak booking hours. The first upgrade is an NGET infrastructure refresh covering servers, storage, networking and software to increase capacity and resilience. The company said the platform has reached around 37,000 tickets per minute and this may increase to more than 0.1 million (mn) tickets per minute following the work; PRF modernisation has involved an infusion of Rs 1.5 billion (bn).

The second upgrade is an active-active disaster recovery system intended to maintain services if one site faces an outage. IRCTC said the arrangement is important during peak booking periods when even a one or two minute disruption can affect passengers and operations. The company indicated the disaster recovery location would most probably be at Secunderabad and that the design aims to reduce the so-called golden hour impact on bookings.

A beta version of the redesigned site was launched on July 15 with a new user experience and user interface intended to make booking faster and simpler. IRCTC said the beta removes advertisements, CAPTCHAs and pop-ups, displays seat availability across all classes, reduces checkout steps and offers an option to save passenger details for repeat bookings. The operator said these changes are part of a broader effort to transform the web and app experience and that a full redesigned release will be rolled out soon.

IRCTC has also tightened checks to prevent unauthorised or suspicious users from clogging the booking system during peak windows, identified as eight am, 10 am and 11 am. The company said it employs Akamai for bot mitigation and content delivery and has developed additional measures to offload static content and reduce automated scurries. It added that the inactivity time limit for agents has been extended from 15 minutes to 30 minutes to deter unauthorised session holding. Officials said the combined upgrades should improve reliability and passenger experience during high demand.