There were many super sized P2P networks back in the day. Napster had over 1.5 million simultaneous users, FastTrack had nearly 5 million, and eDonkey2000 had a similar - if not larger - population. Those are impressive numbers, and for a time, were the top contenders for the P2P crown. But then BitTorrent came along.

There's a lot of confusion over the terms "file-sharing", "P2P network", and how the BitTorrent protocol falls into play. First, file-sharing is simply an umbrella term used to describe any avenue of transferring files. The newsgroups, Kazaa, mIRC, OpenNap, are all file-sharing resources. There's nothing specific about the word file-sharing, and anyone can use it to describe any community where a file gets from one computer or another.

How that file is transferred requires us to be more specific. BitTorrent isn't a P2P network, it's a protocol. That protocol describes how files are shared, transferred, stored, etc. Similarly, OpenNap isn't a network either, it's a communication protocol.

To find a P2P network, we have to dig a bit deeper still. Within the protocol, we will find the networks. In other words, you can't search BitTorrent, but you can search the trackers within the protocol. For example, The Pirate Bay is a file-sharing network using the BitTorrent protocol to help people share files. Similarly, BunnyMatrix is a file-sharing network that uses the OpenNap protocol for a similar purpose. You can supplant the term "P2P" with "file-sharing" to describe a particular network and be just as accurate as anyone else.

Now that's settled what community is the largest P2P network? If The Pirate Bay's stats are accurate, this Swedish tracker is by far the largest P2P network the world has seen. With over 21 million peers, or simultaneous users, The Pirate Bay easily takes the P2P crown. To help celebrate this achievement, the administrators have made an effort, however humorous or serious it may be, to gain entry into the Guinness Book of World Records.

"Your claim is now in a queue. Well, we decided to go ahead -- we just applied for an entry in the Guiness book of world records,” their latest blog post reads.

The growth of The Pirate Bay has been truly phenomenal, and dispels myths that P2P technology is becoming less popular. Oh, and what does The Pirate Bay hope to enter the records as? "Biggest file sharing network in the world," they tell us.

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BitTorrent :: Trackers/Indexers

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