# Count of Network File Instances

**URL:** <https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/count-of-network-file-instances/5982>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [July 30, 2019, 5:19am UTC](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/count-of-network-file-instances/5982 "2019-07-30T05:19:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![CyberVenus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cdc98d/32.png) [@CyberVenus](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/u/CyberVenus)\
**Post date:** [July 30, 2019, 5:19am UTC](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/count-of-network-file-instances/5982/1 "2019-07-30T05:19:49Z")

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In the interest of content preservation, I’m curious if there’s done sort of way to query the network for a file to determine basically how many instances of the file are out there, sort of the equivalent of bittorrent’s “seeds” count. After a brief search I was unable to find anything that resembled that.

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**Author:** ![Jewcub](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ipfs.tech/jewcub/32/3135_2.png) [@Jewcub](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/u/Jewcub)\
**Post date:** [July 30, 2019, 6:50am UTC](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/count-of-network-file-instances/5982/2 "2019-07-30T06:50:24Z")

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Yeah I’m curious about some of the basic workings of IPFS like this too. Let me know what you find out.

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**Author:** ![stebalien](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ipfs.tech/stebalien/32/156_2.png) [@stebalien](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/u/stebalien)\
**Post date:** [July 31, 2019, 10:09pm UTC](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/count-of-network-file-instances/5982/3 "2019-07-31T22:09:47Z")

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You can use `ipfs dht findprovs CID` to find peers claiming to provide the content in question. Note: that query will stop at 10 peers by default, IIRC.

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**Author:** ![CyberVenus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cdc98d/32.png) [@CyberVenus](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/u/CyberVenus)\
**Post date:** [July 31, 2019, 10:44pm UTC](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/count-of-network-file-instances/5982/4 "2019-07-31T22:44:09Z")

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That should work well enough for now. Is that in the documentation somewhere or did you just happen to be familiar with a bit of the code?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![stebalien](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ipfs.tech/stebalien/32/156_2.png) [@stebalien](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/u/stebalien)\
**Post date:** [August 5, 2019, 4:48am UTC](https://discuss.ipfs.tech/t/count-of-network-file-instances/5982/5 "2019-08-05T04:48:55Z")

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I’m just familiar with that bit of the code. Really, that feature isn’t _supposed_ to be used that way.

- The providers system exists so IPFS can find content, not count how many peers have it.
- The DHT commands (`ipfs dht`) exist mostly for debugging (and some advanced use-cases).