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Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

(kianbradley.com)
655 points k-ian | 2 comments | 17 Jun 25 17:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.463s | source
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Noelia- ◴[18 Jun 25 06:48 UTC] No.44307266[source]▶
I used to think those old trackers were long dead, but it’s wild to see them still pulling in millions of peers. P2P may have faded from the spotlight, but the infrastructure never really went away.
replies(1): >>44307401 #
1. noobermin ◴[18 Jun 25 07:16 UTC] No.44307401[source]▶
I guess...the question is...who? Surely people have to pay to keep these peers just running. 3.1 million is how many millions of dollars in infra per month? I guess it's distributed amongst millions or thousands of people, sure, or may be most of them are bots.
replies(1): >>44307999 #
2. Nemo_bis ◴[18 Jun 25 08:53 UTC] No.44307999[source]▶
It only takes 17000 bittorrent users with 100-200 old torrents each in their clients to get here:

> it peaked at about 1.7 million distinct torrents across 3.1 million peers

Most people don't regularly prune their torrent library.