IRCTC ticket booking website will not work on some computers. Read on to know if you are one of them…
Do you book Indian Railways tickets on Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) next-generation e-ticketing website? And if you are using Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 Operating System (OS) based computers to book your e-ticket from IRCTC website, then you will soon have to upgrade your Operating System.
As per the recent notification by IRCTC on its website irctc.co.in, the e-ticketing website is migrating to TLS 1.2 to enhance its security features. According to a report in Financial Express, since TLS 1.2 is not supported by older operating systems like Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, users with these OS will not be able to access the IRCTC website soon. For this, IRCTC has advised its users to upgrade to operating systems higher than Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
“To enhance the security features on IRCTC e-ticketing website www.irctc.co.in, it is being migrated to TLS 1.2. TLS 1.2 is not supported in older versions of operating systems like Windows XP & Windows Server 2003. After migration IRCTC e-ticketing website will not be accessible in Windows XP and Windows server 2003. Users may upgrade their operating systems higher than Windows XP/Server 2003,” the IRCTC had said.
OS for Booking e-Tickets
The Windows operating systems on which the new next-generation IRCTC website will function well are listed as follows:
• Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008
• Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012
• Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2
• Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016
Upgraded Security & Additional Features
Usually, the IRCTC users who book tickets on ‘irctc.co.in’ website, have to pay the ticket charges through online transactions. And for making the online financial transactions, IRCTC users either use debit card, net banking, credit card or mobile wallets. In order to make the IRCTC website more secure for all online transactions, the system is migrated to TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2. However, the number of IRCTC users using Windows XP is now much less in India. IRCTC stated that most of the users have lately resorted to Windows 7 or Windows 10.
It is notable that Microsoft had already ended support for Windows XP on 8 April 2014 after keeping the OS in 12 years of service. Of now, Microsoft no longer provides security updates or technical support for the Windows XP Operating System. As per latest reports, Microsoft will soon be outdating security supports to the Windows 7 by 2020.
Last year, the IRCTC website was upgraded in a bid to make it more user-friendly. This has resulted in more number of online users booking online tickets, which in turn, has decreased crowds of people at the various Railway Reservation Centers, coming in for booking tickets, states IRCTC. According to Indian Railways, the upgraded IRCTC website has several new features for the convenience of passengers such as checking available trains without logging in, waitlist prediction feature etc. In order to address round the clock queries of railway passengers, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based chatbot called ‘Ask Disha’ (DISHA- Digital Interaction to Seek Help Anytime) has also been introduced on IRCTC’s website and on IRCTC Rail Connect Mobile App.
