[Resolved]  IRCTC/Online Booking — SERVER DOWN between 8am--9am

IRCTC online booking problems.. host of messages but no booking.

Today morning i wanted to book Tatkal tickets for 5 of my family members who wanted to travel from Agra to Chennai (broadband connection). Just before 8:am, the server behaved normal, and i was able to login without any problems. Only the server responded that I could not book before 8:am.

I waited patiently till 8:00am. Just a few seconds after 8:00am, the server put up a variety of error messages like:

- your session has expired.
- your browser have been idle for a long time, so log in again
- you might have clicked refresh/back buttons, so log in again
- you might have clicked the same button twice, so log in again
- communication problem
- service not available.

Finally, after about half hour, i.e., after 8:30am, the server behaved normal and "responded" to show that all available tickets have been taken and only waiting list tickets were available.

Now, isn't that funny! I'm sure, the Indian Railways would attribute all the above said messages to the user's (my) ignorance or to the excessive load on the server. But how come, these kind of messages never appear in any other online banking or trading or reservation systems (be it air or rail) across the world and only in the Indian Railways, irctc?

If you see the error messages, most of them are ridiculous!


For example,

- "your browser have been idle for a long time, so log in again" : (Hey there! i was waiting for your server to respond. thats not my problem)

- "you might have clicked refresh/back buttons, so log in again" : (What?!! you must be joking!! I did not press any refresh/back/ forward button... then who did??)

- "you might have clicked the same button twice, so log in again" : (First of all i didnt do it. Even if so, How does it matter? how does clicking the toggle button twice will affect any system??)

- "communication problem" : (You got it right mate! given the right amount in the right direction could have got the right "communication" path for me and fetched me the ticket...)


- "service not available" : (WTF are u taking about?)

Long live indian railways..

@barani_2011 Dude. U are right about the problem. but still these error messages are not funny at all.
"your browser have been idle for a long time, so log in again" :

while you leave your system idle. ITCTC logs you out and create bandwidth for other user. If they dont do so, every body will leave their machines logged into irctc. And the server performance will degrade.

rest two error messages... you can ignore. these are not applicable for your case.
"you might have clicked the same button twice, so log in again" and this matters. trust me I am an Software engineer. And we know this creates problem. Take a simple example- (although this never happens in real life.Its just for explaining) You are making payment. and you press "PAY" button twice. so what would happen?? what if it deducts money twice?? you definitely don't want this. So there are some mechanisms which prevent this action to avoid confusion at server side programs.

N yeah still Its a problem at IRCTC that it doesn't handle traffic b/w 8AM to 9AM. But again.. every body is trying b/w 8 to 9.