ThePirateBay.org has been suffering numerous problems recently, the result of ever accumulating traffic over the course of its existence. As many know, ThePirateBay.org (TPB) is the largest BitTorrent tracker - a considerable feat considering the size of the BitTorrent community. Immune from prosecution in its Swedish home, TPB has continued its existance uninterupted from prosecution. Its unusually long lifespan has turned it into a file-sharing icon, as its blatant and humorous disregard for copyright takedown notices have earned it widespread respect and notoriety.

As TPB’s legend grows, so has its already enormous user base. Currently, TPB boasts 774373 registered users, 1910541 peers and 118743 indexed torrents. This has equated to numerous slowdowns, equipment failures and the inability of the site to resolve. Rather than hoping for the best or simply ignoring the problem, ThePirateBay.org instead has been very active in rebuilding their server farm and hardware profile.

The journey towards reconstruction started with moving the server farm from Gothenburg to Stockholm. In Stockholm, TPB will enjoy access to better equipment and Internet connectivity. In addition, TPB will enjoy less expensive datacenter expenditures. Although exact numbers aren’t available, moving TPB’s server farm to Stockholm will save enough capital to help cover their enormous expansion project.

In addition to moving, TPB greatly expanded their hardware profile. The new setup includes 9 Xeon CPUs @ 3.06 GHz (each one $490), 15 sticks of 1 gigabyte ram (each one $355), 4 Intel Pro/1000 MT server adapters (each one $124) and finally and least expensive, 1 Seagate Barracuda 80 Gigabyte hard drive ($89.) The total cost? 12, 881 US dollars.

TPB’s situation is currently in flux. There is occasional downtime and slowdowns, yet these circumstances are to be expected after such an undertaking. Understanding the concerns of its users, TPB in a rare new update addressed its user’s concerns.

“We're alive. We just don't update the news pages that often as you've noticed. Although we should and we're going to!

“Some news though. We've moved the servers to Stockholm to get faster connectivity to the global network (more info here). We've also did some major upgrades to the hardware (check here for more information) and doing some major updates to the search engine.

“Stay tuned, we're going to keep being the biggest and best.”

Indeed, some interesting changes and inventive fundraising techniques are currently underway that should ensure TPB’s continued stability. At the conclusion of this writing, TPB appears stable and usable as its technical crew continues to resolve any remaining glitches.

This story is filed in these Slyck News categories
BitTorrent :: Trackers/Indexers

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