How to choose a proxy network for your business: 3 practical tips
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Masking an IP address using a proxy is necessary not only to bypass censorship on the Internet and watch TV shows. In recent years, proxies have been increasingly used to solve corporate problems from testing applications under load to competitive intelligence. On Habré there is a good overview of various options for using proxies in the field of business.
Today we’ll talk about what to look for when choosing a proxy network to solve such corporate problems.
How large is the pool of available addresses
Studies show that in order for blocking bypass systems to work effectively, they must constantly expand the pool of available IP addresses.
Firstly, it reduces the likelihood that a particular address will be detected by censors, and secondly, the presence of a large number of connection options positively affects the speed of work.
Therefore, when choosing proxy networks, especially for solving business problems (read more about them here), it is important to analyze the volume of the pool of available addresses. For example, the Infatica network now unites 1,283,481 resident addresses.
How many countries does the proxy service support?
In addition to the number of IPs, a key parameter of the proxy network is the geographical distribution of addresses. Not always proxy providers can boast of having a large number of options for connecting in different countries, as a result, some companies simply lie about the location of their servers and IP. There are even studies on this subject.
The more connection options in different countries are available, the more efficiently you can bypass different types of locks - from state to corporate.
When choosing a proxy service, you must take into account the latitude of the address pool and their geographical location. The ideal option is to get information about how many addresses are available for a particular country. Not all companies provide such information, here is how the distribution of addresses by top 20 locations in the Infatica system looks like:
In total, more than 100 countries are available
Restrictions
When using proxies, especially for solving corporate problems, performance plays an important role. Quite often, proxy providers impose various restrictions. This is rarely mentioned in marketing materials, but it is easy to run into traffic limits or the number of concurrent sessions.
To avoid such inconvenience, it is worth directly asking a question about the presence or absence of such restrictions to the representatives of the provider. For example, we introduced the ability to work with unlimited traffic and the number of simultaneous sessions in 2018.
Useful links and materials from Infatica :
- Research: creating a blocking proxy service using game theory
- The history of the fight against censorship: how the flash proxy method created by scientists from MIT and Stanford works
- How to understand when proxies are lying: verification of physical locations of network proxies using the active geolocation algorithm
- How to disguise yourself on the Internet: compare server and resident proxies