Shortly about residential proxies

Every single device used to connect to the internet (i.e., Phone, tablet, laptop) has an IP address that is tethered with a physical device that can pinpoint the location of the device in use. Whenever you go online – your all information about cookies, personal preferences in browsers are connected with your real IP address. Now, you may have experienced such issues as trying to access a site that is geo-locked for accessing only from a certain country when we live in such times when The Internet is more of a global community or data scraping scenarios which sometimes end up in the IP being blocked. This is where proxies come in as mediators to help you out. The residential proxies do use IP addresses that come from ISP (Internet Service Provider) and not a data center, since this is different type of proxy already.  The deal with residential proxies is that the ISP registers the IP addresses in public databases which do determine the location, network and devices internet provider. They are treated as if real people would be connecting from real location as to oppose to datacenter IP’s.

 

How do these proxies work?

 

The process of proxy doing its casual work is pretty simple. In fact, it can be described in simple 3 steps:

1. Purpose of proxy and the main principle of working is routing your internet connection through the server that will act as a middle man between you and the target website;
2. This so called “middle man” server does change the IP address when you are making your connection request;
3. Boom, and you are done! Your real IP is not visible and you are treated by the webpages in target just like a casual normal user but different.

There are 2 types of residential proxies. These being:

• Residential Rotating proxies;
• Static residential proxies.

Let’s talk about these types in more details.

Residential rotating proxies in details

Although they are like regular proxies that do hide your IP address, rotating proxies (also known as backconnect proxies) cover you with a large shared pool of proxies (120+ countries available) that do switch in-between themselves within every session (~30min+) or every request/refresh thus allowing user to create as many requests as user needs (unlimited thread connections possible) without getting taken down or flagged for “suspicious activity”. The IP’s do belong to real individuals. You may ask how or why do people share their IP’s? Simplest way to explain is that this exists due to peers who voluntarily opt-in (and can leave at any time) to provide access to their IPs for some benefits like ad-free application/website experiences.

Here’s an example of what happens when you are making a server request:

• Let’s say you are searching for proxy-cheap.com through your initial normal connection.
• Server returns with a result of proxy-cheap.com. If user constantly is repeating same search result (or in case automated bot is used) the initial connections IP address could be flagged or banned.
• After first search – every following search will be made through a different proxy connection. Rotating residential proxies can reduce risk of block or restriction due to too many requests. Proxy rotates giving you a new identity.

 

Advantages of using residential rotating proxies are:

• Accessing the sites and open-source information that have geo-locked restrictions;
• Allowance to send any number of requests to the target website (unlimited thread connections);
• More accurate datasets as the results of your searches tend to be not inflated.

 

Disadvantages of using residential rotating proxies are:

• More expensive option as you pay per GB consumption rather than monthly commitment although this is sometimes completely necessary for users use case and still could be more effective (this is subjective to every users bandwidth consumption);
• Residential rotating proxies are using shared IP pool instead of private pool. This meaning that some IP’s could have been used or might not work with the use case of yours.
• Only HTTP connection protocol available.

For more information on how to connect to residential rotating proxies – we have a video tutorial that can be found here.

 

Static residential proxies in details

Static residential (dedicated) proxies are a type of proxies that is private and dedicated only to the user that made a purchase meaning that IP you have purchased will not be sold to anyone else so it will not create shared IP pool scenario. They are given to you for a specific period of time. Initial purchase is 1 month but proxies can be auto-extended or extended in advance for further months. These are the IP’s coming from ISP (Internet Service Provider). We offer both username/password and 3 IP whitelisting options meaning that you can allow certain users to have access to proxy usage and the best part is – the whitelisting can be changed at any time you need! These types of proxies are coming from real residential locations meaning that you can access much more without the risks of getting your IP flagged or banned.

 

Use cases

The residential proxies can be used for a big variety of possible scenarios, most popular being:

• Social networks: One of the biggest reasons for choosing residential proxies. Yes, it is known that major social media networks are quite a risky game because of websites being very cautious it is still possible using the proxies to create multiple accounts, change locations without any possible restrictions;
• Market research: data scraping, ads verifications, SEO and other scenarios. With residential proxies you can get ahead of your competitors faster, proxies will help you out to localize the ads, help you out reach better SEO results by conducting competitor researches and many more!
• Business automation: Our proxies can help you to make various automation processes, data extraction and other use cases to help you out to stay ahead of your competitors;
• Retail: Sneakers and sneaker bots? Yes! The market is big and profitable and our residential proxies can help you out to stay competitive in your business.

 

In conclusion, the proxy type that is needed for your use case very much depends on the target websites that you are willing to access. You can start using residential rotating proxies to check if this suits your use case and whether or not you may need static residential proxies.