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P2P Population Growing Again

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the goin-for-a-new-record-high dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Slyck news is reporting that the file-sharing population has recovered from its mid-year plateau and is once again growing. At 9.45 million users, it is only slightly below its greatest height of 9.6 million users in August. Keep in mind however; these numbers do not represent the population of the BitTorrent community, which would surely add many millions more."

5 of 313 comments (clear)

  1. Link and stuff by maccalvin5 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's a link to the actual survey. It's not too informative, but it shows the cyclic nature of the p2p userbase mentioned in the article.

  2. Should ISP's shut down P2P filesharing? by Sheetrock · · Score: 4, Informative
    There is a case to be made, I think, that if certain ports were disabled for home users a serious dent could be made in this P2P population -- not to mention the great deal of bandwidth freed up for more serious Internet activity.

    This is already accepted to some extent by anti-SPAM policies that forbid access to external SMTP servers, and has been used to great effect by university administrators.

    It would be far better than the legal approach, which is inefficient and expensive for all parties involved, and would prevent many viruses along with piracy.

    --

    Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
    -- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.




  3. Holy crap, dude. by TheSpoom · · Score: 5, Informative

    I feel really sorry for you. Switch ISPs now. Seriously. And while you're at it, publicize the fact that Cox Cable is censoring their traffic, and therefore no longer deserves the title of common carrier, and therefore is liable for the actions of their users.

    Ironically, if you think about it, they're putting themselves in danger of getting a lawsuit from the RIAA.

    --
    It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
    - E. Debs
  4. Re:Bittorrent for the win... kinda by td4guy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Try switching to port 1720, the standard VoIP port. It works with Rogers Cable in Canada. They don't run packet shapers on any traffic on that port, for fear of lagging VoIP calls.

  5. Re:Bittorrent for the win... kinda by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Or you can switch to a client that encrypts the header. I know that in the world of private tracker BitComet is hated, but it really is a great client once you disable DHT tracking and enable header encryption, although Azureus may support it, too. My university also filters bittorent headers, but once those headers were encrypted, I was back in business.