Airtel’s solutions provider, Bharti Telesoft, designed a unique televoting application that uses Short Messages as the media for polling votes. The application was developed on open standards. Televoting effectively enables Airtel’s mobile subscribers to participate in various SMS contests aired on both KBC & Indian Idol. The system handles tremendous peak loads of mobile-originated (MO) messages generated by subscribers and processes it according to a pre-configured format specified by the two TV programs. The application caters to subscriber traffic across millions of users in seven different Airtel Circles over a pre-defined short code (646).
“When we first decided to evaluate Linux, apprehensions were raised immediately. People began to say that the system would choke and not be able to handle the load,” explains Vatsal.
“But in our simulations, Linux proved its detractors completely wrong. The pilot Enterprise Linux server could handle a peak load of 1000 TPS with superb ease. People soon began to realize that Linux is in fact ideally suited for high throughputs. Since our transactions needed to be recorded into a log file on-the-fly, Linux, with its high performance, was the perfect fit,” he adds.
Security was also another critical factor that swung the decision in the favor of Enterprise Linux. “Microsoft Windows is prone to viruses that affect its filesystem easily, whereas Linux remains unaffected,” he adds. In fact, Windows was never on the selection radar at all. “We didn’t even evaluate it for our server requirements,” adds Vatsal.
At Airtel, Enterprise Linux runs on low cost, dual Intel Xeon servers. The servers run both the Televoting application and a MySQL database at each of the seven different locations across the country. A central server, again powered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux, functions as a host. “The central server generates MIS reports and also acts as an FTP server for the other seven distributed machines,” explains Uttam Kumar, Project Head, Airtel.
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