I am sure HN has many people who have worked on scalability and web. As an ordinary developer I can certainly see holes in his arguments as to why Indian Railway's booking service does not work but I dont have experience managing a website of that scale.<p>I will really be thankful if more knowledgeable members on HN can tell me if he makes sense.<p>Here is the complete interview:<p>http://www.techgig.com/knowledge/IRCTC-chief-talks-about-bandwidth-clogging-e-commerce-and-steps-to-improve-services--3540<p>Background: http://irctc.co.in is the only website through which we can book train tickets in India. Trains in India are controlled by government alone. This website too is managed by one of the railways department. Overall it is reported that only 20% of the attempted transaction succeed. During peak time it is below 2%.<p>Forget about completing the transaction, even the stylesheets wont load during the peak time and the very next page you see after logging in is "Session Expired".