Is there any way to check the "health" of an ipfs file?

From @traverseda on Fri Jul 29 2016 15:05:28 GMT+0000 (UTC)

With torrents, you can generally get the number of seeders. Does ipfs have a similar mechanism? Can ipfs have a similar mechanism?


Copied from original issue: https://github.com/ipfs/faq/issues/153

From @RichardLitt on Fri Jul 29 2016 15:31:24 GMT+0000 (UTC)

Currently, it looks like you can only get a lower bound: ipfs dht findprovs <hash> | wc -l. For example:

$ ipfs dht findprovs QmW2WQi7j6c7UgJTarActp7tDNikE4B2qXtFCfLPdsgaTQ | wc -l
20
1 Like

From @traverseda on Fri Jul 29 2016 18:29:08 GMT+0000 (UTC)

And what, exactly, does that do?

What’s a prov?

From @RichardLitt on Fri Jul 29 2016 18:44:29 GMT+0000 (UTC)

A provider, here represented by the peer ID, is a peer in the DHT that can provide a specific value, given a key. In essence, AFAIK, a seeder. So, there are 20 seeders for that hash.

From @Ghoughpteighbteau on Fri Jul 29 2016 19:34:38 GMT+0000 (UTC)

http://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmW2WQi7j6c7UgJTarActp7tDNikE4B2qXtFCfLPdsgaTQ/cat.jpg

why do so many people have this picture :laughing:

From @Kubuxu on Fri Jul 29 2016 19:50:46 GMT+0000 (UTC)

Because people love kittens.

From @EtherTyper on Tue Aug 09 2016 22:26:23 GMT+0000 (UTC)

@Ghoughpteighbteau It’s a picture used in some IPFS tutorials.