What Are Residential Proxies and How Do They Work

Residential proxies refer to services that provide connection to the internet from specific devices. Different from basic IPv4/IPv6 proxies that operate from servers, residential proxies originate their IP addresses from real devices, thus the users are legitimate and not bots or automated users. Such type of impersonation is useful in overcoming anti-fraud systems that a majority of websites and applications have in place to prevent multi-accounting, automated traffic, and suspicious requests from gaining access to the system.

In this article we will try to answer the question of what is a residential proxy, as well as what features it provides and how to operate them properly.

Benefits of Using Residential Proxies

Primary advantages of using residential rotating proxies are:

• Authentic IP addresses. A residential proxy uses an IP address assigned to a real-world device like a computer, mobile phone, tablet, or laptop. This IP is linked with specific details about the device such as the Internet service provider, technical characteristics, and physical location.
• Enhanced privacy. Residential proxies are less vulnerable to detection because the IP addresses are of real-life devices and so have a reduced chance of being blocked.
• Rotation IP Change. A number of the home proxy suppliers provide a rotation service that changes the IP address at periodic intervals or when particular conditions are met. The dynamic IP servers are fundamental for web scraping, advertising, SEO, programming, and software testing because they reduce the risks of blocks and captchas, hide the origin of the requests, and also enable testing of the applications from different regions.
• Wide choice of geolocations. Residential proxies have physical addresses assigned to them. Providers usually let customers choose a particular geolocation, including the country, region, city, and even the provider that may be important for marketing or other similar activities.
• High trust factor. The features of the residential proxies arouse a high level of confidence from the websites and internet services which allows them to SMM specialists, arbitrageurs, and marketers many more opportunities without having a permanent fear of being blocked or bypassing captchas.

These features make the need for residential proxy servers for anonymity, connection stability, and geo restrictions on the internet a marketing, web scraping, or social media page management activity.

How Residential Proxies Operate

A residential proxy will act in the capacity of an intermediary by changing the original IP address to that of an actual user. Here's how it works from a technical standpoint:

1. Client request: Whenever a request e.g. access to a website is requested by the client, it is first sent to the closest residential proxy server. This request contains the client's IP address along with a target URL and several other http headers.
2. Process the request: The request is serviced in tandem with the routing rules defined within the residential proxy server. The user's original IP address is concealed by the port number provided by the ISP.
3. Sending the request: The proxy server then sends the request to the target server. The masking of the request ensures that the target server only sees the proxy’s IP address and none of the client’s devices.
4. Receiving the response: The proxy server captures the response from the target server. The server can then process the data in many different forms before sending it back to the client.
5. Processing the response: The proxy can save the response in the cache in order to be able to respond to similar requests in the future or to modify the data according to some rules. Caching enables a proxy server to respond to subsequent identical requests from its cache in lieu of forwarding them to the target server, thereby improving the response time on highly used resources.

Customers who buy private residential proxies acquire the ability to traffic and a set of the IP addresses of actual users within a certain geographic area. This set of IP addresses contains a number of proxies that can be used in rotation. This process happens in between the changes of IP addresses, which can be set to happen automatically or based on certain parameters predefined for the rotation.

Principles of Obtaining Residential Proxies

There are two overarching approaches to sourcing residential IP addresses; each described here, presumes a different moral standpoint:

• Ethical: here, there is a real user who targets IP address-sharing and willingly agrees to provide his/her IPs to proxy providers. This is commonly done on a reward basis such as getting a premium account on proxies or programmatic bonuses. The user is guided to install some utility software, which allows the service provider to connect and use the user's internet bandwidth to pass traffic for other people. This process is legal and ethical since the involved parties and what they are engaging in is very transparent.
• Unethical: involving the acquisition of residential proxies through fake means which includes deploying viruses and other botnets and different kinds of malware. These methods secretly hijack a user's system to route proxy traffic without their knowledge. In the majority of nations, these practices are considered unlawful and expose the users of these proxies to a lot of risks and security compromises. As for the one(s) operating these single proxies, the legal and ethical implications are overwhelmingly severe.

Below, we'll explore main ethical ways of obtaining residential proxies:

• Proxy providers. These are in most instances specialized organizations with specialists that rent IP addresses from real users and provide them to their customers. Due to the nature of most proxy providers, they boast a steady connection and an array of geographic locations which makes it easier to use the proxies for data parsing, advertising testing, and overcoming geo-blocks. It is also the most basic method.
• Residential P2P networks. By means of special P2P software, real people rent out their IP addresses and the P2P services serve as middlemen. These allow for the easier distribution of residential IP addresses among users. Though usually more cost-efficient, this method is best advised for people looking to save as it provides lower means of stability and security.
• A personal network of residential proxies. This method ensures control over the network and its configuration providing for stable and reliable systems. To use this method, one has to recruit real users and install special software or rent their internet connections so as to build their own residential proxy networks.

Purchasing from proxy providers is the easiest and most accessible way to obtain residential proxies, allowing for a quick and straightforward way to start using reliable IP addresses for your needs. Users also benefit from a variety of residential proxy types and options for their rotation.

Shared and Dedicated Proxies

There are usually two common types of residential proxies offered by the providers:

Shared residential proxies grant access to IP addresses that are concurrently utilized by different users. This shared use lowers the overall anonymity and security, yet allows for a more cost-effective approach. The abuse of a single IP by several users increases the odds of blocking and lowers the connection speed.

In the case of dedicated residential proxies, a single IP address is allocated to a single user. This makes data protection more effective as well as lessens the potential negative consequences from other users activities. Dedicated residential proxies are the best type for any task that requires the utmost confidentiality and stability.

Unlike dedicated residential proxies, which are better for managing several social media accounts, deploying traffic arbitrage, and other situations where anonymity is paramount and sophisticated anti-fraud systems are in place, shared residential proxies are used for web scraping, SEO analysis, ad campaign testing, content viewing, and overcoming geo-blocks.

Methods of Rotating Residential Proxies

There are multiple options that can be used to rotate residential proxy IP addresses and are suitable for various online activities.

1. Sticky sessions: this technique focuses on keeping the residential proxy servers addresses static while the traffic source is in a single session on the internet. This is ideal for any task that requires long interactions on web pages such as account log-ins, shopping, or even web scraping as it minimizes the issues that frequently changing IP addresses could cause.
2. Time-based rotation: the IP address is changed automatically at a pre-set duration. This can be every 5, 10, 30, or 60 minutes. This method drastically reduces the chances of getting blocked or detected especially when there are a lot of requests to be fulfilled.
3. Link-based rotation: this involves changing IP addresses on every new link or page that is clicked. This method works great for people that need to bypass certain geographical barriers, control multiple social media accounts or even test ads.
4. Request based rotation: With this method, the IP address rotates after a specific number of requests are made. This technique is helpful to balance server loads to prevent getting banned due to constant IP requests and is particularly good for web scraping, SEO analysis, and running automated scripts.

The most common methods, sticky sessions and time-based rotation, are applicable for a plethora of circumstances with little risk of getting blocked by the anti-fraud systems. On the other hand, rotation by link and by request count is highly specialized and should only be used when there is a great need for special management of the address IPs.

How to Purchase Residential Proxies

1. Access your account at Proxy-Seller and head over to the “Residential Proxies” section on the platform.

   

2. Pick either the “3-day trial” option to spend $1.99 for 200 MB of traffic or click “View plans” to see all other plans. For this tutorial, click on “3-day trial”.

   

3. After that, choose a payment option and click “Submit the order” in the following window.

   

4. Write down your email address as well as your country in corresponding fields.

   

5. Fill in your card information and make the payment.

   

6. Once you have paid and the order has been completed, you will have 200 MB of traffic allocated to you for the use of the residential proxy. Next, navigate to your profile and access the “Orders” tab where all active orders will be displayed.

   

7. Move down the page until a menu appears allowing you to rename the proxy lists, choose the rotation type, authorization method, and geolocation. From the “ISP” field, you can also specify the provider and the format for proxy list export. Important to note, generated residential proxies will be working with both HTTP/S and Socks5 protocols by default.

   

8. After setting everything up, you can hit “Create”. On the page, there’s a section at the top that has private residential proxies for immediate use.

   

Residential Proxy vs VPN

Another method to keep safe while browsing is the use of residential proxies and VPNs in order to keep someone’s identity hidden. Although these 2 types have this similarity in hiding one’s true identity, they are quite different.

An individual using a VPN gets connected to a server using an encrypted channel. Specifically, this allows users to protect their online activities without revealing their location. The downside of a VPN is that many users connecting through one central server can create a pattern of behavior that is easy to identify. Subsequently, most VPNs use a central server to route traffic which can be detrimental.

A residential proxy, however, is much different. It uses real IP addresses of people that an ISP has assigned to an actual household. Because it looks like it's coming from a regular internet user, residential proxies are, indeed, incredibly hard to identify and block.

Mobile Residential Proxies: What You Need to Know

Unlike traditional residential proxies, mobile residential proxies provide IP addresses associated with mobile devices and are far more difficult to detect by services which block non-desktop oriented traffic. This makes them crucial when one needs to extract data from mobile applications or perform mobile browsing actions on computers, may it be an individual or an organization.

Such type of proxy is also invaluable when testing mobile sites, when content is available in specific geolocation, and when working in constrained mobile environments.

Conclusion

To sum up, Residential proxies are particularly useful because they can evade anti-fraud systems with great accuracy. Since this type of proxy uses IP addresses of genuine users, they are the most trusted among marketers and business men. Because they are so effective at blending in and not being noticed, proxies of this type are in high demand within marketing, targeting, SMM, and data scraping. These experts utilize residential proxies for many reasons – web crawling, audience or competitors research, ad campaign testing or even just managing multiple social media accounts without restrictions.