Residential proxies are the most reliable source of IP addresses that won’t get you blocked when collecting data or automating tasks. More than with any other proxy type, provider choice is crucial. Residential proxies from an unreliable provider can be a waste of money.
They are slower than other types, especially datacenter proxies, and must compensate with IP address legitimacy. Unfortunately, many proxy buyers do not understand this aspect of residential proxies. This article aims to fill this gap and provide knowledge to help you choose wisely.
How Residential Proxies Work?
As with every other proxy, residential ones are just intermediaries routing your network requests before they reach websites. Your device won’t connect to the internet directly with a proxy. Instead, your IP address and all the information about your location and internet service provider (ISP) will be concealed.
It’s common to define residential proxies as having IPs verified by ordinary ISPs and using household machines to host the connection. This is done in order to highlight their differences from other types, namely datacenter and mobile proxies. However, it doesn’t show how exactly they work.
Transforming an ordinary device, a laptop, for example, to a proxy server takes some specific software. It must use port forwarding in the machine to enable it to route requests of other devices. In some cases, it also encrypts the data and enables the IP to be rotated with other proxies in the network.
Ideally, such software should be lightweight and not require much computing power from the device. Unlike datacenter proxies, residential proxy devices are often used for other tasks simultaneously. It can slow down the machine’s performance as a proxy server. That’s why the source of residential proxies is very important.
Three Ways Of Sourcing Residential Proxies
It’s well known that datacenter proxies are sourced in commercial data centers. That’s what the name implies, after all. Mobile proxies, similarly, are often sourced from the so-called mobile proxy farms, where multiple smartphones are connected to one another. Residential proxies have more ways to be sourced.
Residential proxy farms are also possible and used by some providers. However, ISPs are quick to ban such use of their services, and the IP addresses, if flagged by major websites, become barely usable very quickly. Such farms are a technical possibility but rarely used by providers.
Volunteer device networks are a much more common option when sourcing residential IPs. Specific programs, such as Pawns.app or Honeygain, are created to pay people for sharing their internet bandwidth. Acquired IPs are then sold as residential proxies to customers.
It’s a more reliable sourcing model as IPs come from real users who run their devices in different residential areas. Anonymity and good location targeting are almost guaranteed, but such a sourcing method is costly and does not ensure good performance.
Some providers have strict criteria when accepting participants, while others accept anyone who is willing to give their IP for some spare change. That’s why residential proxies from some providers are slow, while others are able to ensure good speeds. A third group of providers mix in some shady tactics.
Unethical IP sourcing practices are also used quite often. One of them is partnering with software providers to forward their user’s bandwidth. This costs much less for providers but attracts residential IPs from users who aren’t necessarily willing participants. Such connections are not just morally dubious but often unstable.
An even worse scenario is when providers team up with hackers that spread malware to add devices into the residential IP pool. There isn’t any hard evidence to blame any of the providers, but it’s known that malware for such purposes exists. The best way to avoid these risks is to learn how to choose a provider.
Red Flags When Choosing a Provider
Providers are responsible for how their proxies are set up software-wise, what hardware is used and whether the participants are sharing IPs willingly. Testing these things as a customer is extremely difficult. Almost impossible. What we can do as consumers is to check for a few red flags.
- Very High Residential IP address count. Generally, it’s a plus if the provider has lots of IPs on offer, but a count that is too big can raise suspicions of unethical sourcing. For example, Netnut advertises as having the most residential IPs (at the time of writing).
It’s not necessarily a drawback, but there are rumors of unethical sourcing and using datacenter IPs instead of residential ones. That’s why it’s crucial to look into some of the Netnut alternatives and use a proxy checker for their IPs.
- Uneven Performance. If the speed of residential proxies fluctuates a lot, it’s likely that there are problems with software or sourcing. The only way to test this, unfortunately, is to use the proxies yourself. Luckily, there are free trials offered by almost all providers.
Simply take the available plan for a free trial and run a speed test website as if you were using a normal internet connection. Try to check the speed at different times of the day, not just when you need them, to get the full picture. If the performance satisfies you after the free trial, you can subscribe.
- Location choice. If a provider offers lots of IPs for some locations but few for others, it can be a red flag for a proxy farm. When IPs are sourced from participants, the selection is evener, but when farms are set up, the IP counts tend to be concentrated.
Most of the information is on the provider’s website. However, you should be careful to check the amounts for specific locations and not the overall IP address co
Conclusion
Once you understand how residential proxies work and their sources, you start looking at providers quite differently. A reliable provider is one that can balance the number of IPs with ethical sourcing and overall good infrastructure. Don’t commit to a large IP count and low prices quickly.
