12306.cn is a sell system, but it is so different from other sell system like those stores which sell clothes or books on taobao.com.
Why it is different? because its products is not like other stores, 12306.cn sells train tickets, this makes it became very different from other sell systems. As we all know that it is so hard to buy a tickets before holiday, especially before the spring festival. I still remember those times when I am a college student, every time before spring festival, I have to try my best to buy three tickets, one ticket for me and the other two for my good friends, we always go home together. The first method to buy a ticket is waiting in the tickets room and buy it by myself, but it is so tired and the result often let me down, because there are too many people but only few tickets. the second way to buy a ticket is turn to an agency for help, I have to add 30 yuan as extra money to them.
Now we could buy tickets on 12306.cn, if you can access to the internet, but it is still hard to buy a ticket. every time when they start selling tickets on 12306.cn, so many people log on this system, it is said that there are more than 1 billion people crush into this site, this is a heavy pressure for the server, 12306.net crush down many times before. Because it is developed by our guvernment, epople all fell dissatisfied about it, they spend a bout 400 million yuan to develop this ticket sell system, but it still can not solve the problem of buying tickets.
As a profesional IT engineer, I know it is hard to develop a system which have to handle so much visit at same time, it is a difficualt problem. In the big data field, alibaba and tencent performed very well, they have experiences about how to handle so much many and so much data at same time, I think the developer of 12306.cn could lean some technology from these two big company.
It is so hard to handle too much visit at a same time, if too many people run into a system at a same time, the server have to deal with mass data in a second, this means that the server should be very high-performance and the Algorithm of system have to be designed very well, it is not easy to do.
Any way, 12306.cn just is a way to buy tickets, it can not solve all the problem, the key point is the Ministry of Railways have to develop its transport ability, only in this way, every one could buy a ticket when they need.