Australian Federal Police say a child has been rescued from a house during an operation to shut down an online child abuse network.

A total of 21 people across six Australian states and territories were charged this week as part of Operation Conqueror, which investigated the sharing and distribution of photos of child abuse on the internet.

Officers carried out 36 search warrants in every state and territory this week as part of the operation, which began in January.

They say they expect another six to be arrested. The accused are aged between 22 and 76.

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AFP manager of cyber crime operations Glen McEwan says hundreds of thousands of images have been seized and one child has been identified as a victim.

"In this particular investigation, we have been able to secure one potential child victim," he said.

"There are potential avenues of inquiry where we will hopefully be able to identify more."

AFP national coordinator for child protection operations Detective Superintendent Todd Hunter says in one home police found 26 hard drives which they are in the process of analysing.

"[There were] 26 different hard drives of various sizes ranging from 500 gigabytes up to 2 terabytes of data on each hard drive," he said.

"So you're talking serious numbers and amounts of images and video of child exploitation material here."

Commander McEwen says the material seized "can only be classed as abhorrent and personally disgusting".

"In relation to the actual size, it is large from what we have seen," he said.

"When you look at previous operations of similar activity, this is one of the largest."

Commander McEwen praised the collaborative work across a number of institutions in securing the arrests.

"The protection of our children is paramount and cannot be conducted without the assistance of partners within law enforcement, government, non-government agencies, academia and the community," he said.

He says even though technology evolves allowing criminals to change their techniques, it is just a matter of time before online predators will be caught.

"Just because technology evolves as quickly as it does, so too do the tools made available to law enforcement to detect such activity," he said.

"This operation shows that the internet is not anonymous and if you are involved or choose to groom children online or be involved in the production, distribution or access of online child abuse, you will be pursued."

Commander McEwen says sharing images of child abuse online is as serious as abuse itself.

"I would like to stress to any potential offender out there that just because you are dealing with an image of child sexual abuse, doesn't make you any less complicit in the crime," he said.