BANGALORE: Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) that had launched the country's first online ticket booking system for bus service — Any Where Any Time Advance Reservation (AWATAR) — might not have anticipated this kind of rush.

Within two months of providing public interface to book tickets on the lines of the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, the number of simultaneous hits on the site has reached 500, overloading the server. If you login to http://www.ksrtc.in now, you might get a message, "Server is busy. Please try after sometime... sorry for the inconvenience."

AWATAR was launched in July last providing interface to KSRTC franchisees and KSRTC reservation counters. The public interface was provided on March 12. With this, anyone could log in, register as user, book the ticket and take a printout.

The response was overwhelming. No more negotiating city traffic and waiting in queues. Moreover, one could book return tickets, which aided proper planning of travel.

The convenience resulted in increased bookings and revenue. While 2.14 lakh seats were booked in July 2006, generating revenue of Rs. 6.4 crore, bookings doubled to 4.95 lakh, bringing in Rs. 14.82 crore in April 2007.

Faced with the record rush, the corporation is working towards an additional capacity for at least 2,000 simultaneous hits for the time being and unlimited hits in the coming days.

At a recent meeting of representatives of BEL, IBM, Radiant Infosystem and the Central Railway Information System, which as a consortium had developed the software, the corporation sought a solution at the earliest.

KSRTC's Chief System Manager C.S. Sheshadri said: "We hadn't expected this kind of rush while designing the system." He said individual users are not being allowed to book tickets when the load on the network is high. Priority has to be given to those who would be waiting in queues at KSRTC reservation counters and franchisees, he said. While KSRTC operates 38 computerised reservation counters, it has empanelled 188 franchisees to issue advance reservation tickets.

The corporation has also disabled a link on the website offering details regarding availability of bus services between two particular places and the timetable. The link was directly connected to the online booking section, resulting in overload. It plans to connect this link to a static data pool that is updated regularly.

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