For many years, traditional proxy servers rarely had more than a couple of IP addresses. In the various companies I worked for, the proxy often served thousands of clients and many weren’t even multihomed. In fact it was often easier to have a single IP address to configure default gateways on client PCs. The more IP addresses you used meant more configuration options and more firewall rules to be updated.
However the primary roles of proxy servers do change depending on the context they are used in. Whereas a proxy in a corporate network is likely to be concerned with controlling access to the internet and caching web pages for performance. Those supplied by proxy and VPN service providers are primarily concerned with providing privacy and anonymity to their customers. So for these servers having only a single IP address is a severe disadvantage. Remember virtually every single web site you visit will perform an IP address lookup as soon as you visit.
Outside the standard corporate role, the more IP addresses that you have at your disposal the better. Having thousands of individuals accessing the same web sites from a single IP address is going to cause issues and makes it much easier to detect the use of proxies. Although people use proxies for many different reasons online, the core requirements can be summarized –
- Hiding Your Location/IP Address
- Bypassing Geo-restrictions based on location
- Managing multiple digital identities (manually or through software)
Often it may be a combination of these, as to some extent the requirements will frequently overlap. For example an internet marketer might need to hide his location to place ads on an advertising board like Craigslist, whilst running lots of accounts on social media platforms like Instagram. The first task would need an IP address registered in the right location whilst you need multiple IP addresses to manage lots of social media accounts.
Both of these require different sorts of IP addresses and potentially you’ll need separate proxy services. This can cause a problem particularly if you need lots of IP addresses, routed through different locations. It’s not really feasible to have lots of hardware all locked into a few different addresses especially when these requirements change so often.
When you introduce software or automated bots the problem becomes even more convoluted as they usually require lots of IP addresses to function efficiently too. What’s more the advantage of using software is that many tasks can be automated for example the program Jarvee can effectively build, grow and promote hundreds of social media accounts automatically. However to do this it does need access to many IP addresses to manage these accounts without being blocked by the provider.
Buy Proxies Which Can Rotate IP Address
So what’s the solution? How can people get access to lots of different IP addresses that suit their needs without paying a small fortune to hire multiple proxy servers. The market has responded by creating lots of different types of proxies but with a single basic concept underlying them – a proxy rotator capable of switching your IP address automatically.
The new generation of proxy servers don’t have a couple of network cards with single IP addresses, but rather connect to a pool of addresses which they use to make multiple connections. These are the most advanced type of proxies which can effectively rotate your address by specified time or even after every valid HTTP request from a specified ip address list.
This concept works well for both parties, the proxy providers and the customers for the following reasons –
- Customers get access to lots of IP addresses without having to pay for dedicated access.
- Providers can create specialized pools of addresses for different tasks.
So previously if you wanted a few hundred IP addresses which you could use exclusively at any given time, then you would have had to pay a fortune for exclusive use of those addresses. Now you can pay for access to a proxy which can rotate IP addresses. You won’t have permanent exclusive access but crucially you won’t use them concurrently with other users, as long as the proxy is configured properly.
Furthermore different pools of addresses can be created for different purposes. So you can have a single piece of hardware running Instagram proxies or even have IP pools linked to residential VPN addresses. The amount of services can be increased and the cost of these made much more affordable.
IP Rotation is Useful but Can Cause Issues
If privacy were the only concern then rotating your IP address as much as possible would be ideal. However this is rarely the case and switching IP addresses every few seconds can cause problems as well. Most proxy providers allow different ways to rotate your addresses and it’s important to check that it suits your need. For example if you’re managing a particular Instagram profile then switching IP addresses every minute or so could get you account flagged as this is not normal behaviour. The exception is if you’re using addresses from a mobile IP framework which would naturally switch as a user moves about.
Probably the most useful setting is to have your IP address switch with each new HTTP session. This effectively means you would keep the same address while accessing a particular website, selected from a single proxy pool. However this would change addresses whenever the client or the web server changes. This effectively prevents sessions being interrupted or disconnected via an automatic IP address change midway through a session.
Some providers allow for variations on this theme, allowing you to make an IP address ‘sticky’ for a period of time or to switch to a fixed address when needed. Furthermore some software bots allow a certain amount of control too, although you should be careful that IP addresses or proxies are not being rotated from the server and client end simultaneously. If you have Ip rotation software running locally and a rotating IP proxy there’s going to be a confusing number of switches.
Crucially the quality of most of these services depends on a variety of factors. There are unfortunately too many services which are run on slow hardware and a basic IP address list generator picking from low quality datacentre addresses (or worse). For serious online tasks these are rarely sufficient and can cause loads of problems including social network accounts being deleted.
Here’s one of the oldest and most respected Proxy providers on the internet. They operate a rotating proxies trial on most of their accounts, so you can test briefly to see if they work for you.