If you’re new to the world of virtual private networks (VPNs), you might not know what a resident proxy is, let alone why you should buy one. Residential proxies are used in conjunction with VPNs. They are Internet Protocol (IP) addresses connected to the internet through a regular Internet Service Provider (ISP), as opposed to an IP address coming from a huge data center like the Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure.
But why would a company want to buy a private proxy when faster and perhaps more secure servers are available through commercial channels? The answer is simple, a company cannot be identified as a commercial entity by its IP address. For example, since private proxies are IP addresses provided by ISP providers, Verizon says they are associated with private homes.
The fact that an IP address indicates that the person accessing the Internet from that address is a consumer on the street makes certain online business intelligence activities less traceable and therefore less traceable to the target site. is less prone to blockagesScrape the bottom of the barrel?
For example, the practice of web scraping is discouraged and many websites block it because they consider it a violation of their terms of service. However, web scraping is a very useful tool for extracting important data from social media and news articles, as well as extracting pricing information from websites of competing companies.
The scraping activity is often performed by a code-driven bot, usually written in Python computer code, or companies can simply install the scraper as a browser extension. Many websites are protected by software that detects IPs from the data center and blocks the visitor, but when a business buys a consumer proxy, it avoids this potential bottleneck. .
Proxy Pros
Using residential proxies for a business provides several benefits, including the ability to bypass geographical web content restrictions. This technique is commonly used by home VPN users to access certain websites anonymously or to access cheaper streaming services from various devices, such as Android devices, iPhones, tablets, or laptops. By appearing to be located in a different country via an IP address, businesses can gain significant advantages.
For example, as a subscriber based in India, it costs a lot less to access Netflix than in the US, so home VPN users often take advantage of VPNs’ cloaking benefits to watch content that isn’t normally available to them. Another example is the ability to watch the BBC’s UK flagship streaming service, iPlayer – which is only available to UK license holders, but a US VPN user can trick iPlayer into thinking they’re from the UK. I live in
However, companies do not use the geo-cloaking feature of home proxies over VPN to watch TV! Instead, they can test the performance of geo-targeted website advertising or the results of geo-targeted search engine optimization (SEO).
A website offering flights or hotel rooms may use dynamic pricing to serve different regions of the country with different prices depending on the perceived concentration of wealth in that region. . It’s ethically questionable, but there’s a theory that websites listing hotel rooms will show a higher price for the same room for a New York City store than for an Oklahoma convenience store. Using a private proxy can allow the institution to test dynamic pricing via the offer website.
What to look out for when your business buys a Residential Proxy
After identifying the unique beneficial characteristics and benefits of residential proxies, what criteria might a company evaluate before purchasing one or more proxies?
1. Cost
Depending on the length of subscription and the number of proxies required, the price of a resident proxy can range from $18 to around $4800 per month, but some companies buy lots of proxies and “rotate” them so they’re chosen randomly. Buy IP addresses to make web scraping detection and SEO performance testing even more secure.
Revolving proxies for homes can cost thousands of dollars a month, and large corporations use the Internet as their primary revenue generation model.
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Security
The server provided by the ISP must have an appropriate level of encryption to ensure that the business behind it cannot be traced or identified. Also, encryption prevents hackers from trying to install malware or spyware through email attacks and the like.
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Speed
Nothing is guaranteed to be penalized by Google as a slow loading website. Being able to access target websites from a resident proxy is just as important because time is money in web scraping and SEO testing. A cheap proxy with limited traffic handling capabilities can be beyond useless, so negotiated speed and capacity levels should be checked before purchasing.
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Reliability
It’s one thing losing the internet at home while you’re trying to use Zoom to call the kids or watch the latest episode of American Idol. But it’s a completely different matter when your business processes stop because of unreliable proxy servers. Again, minimal uptime is essential, as is fast redundant switchover to backup servers should the primary IP go offline.
Money well spent.
In summary, it is highly recommended that businesses of all sizes acquire a residential proxy. For small businesses, residential proxies help avoid detection by hackers, while larger data-driven businesses benefit from the additional features described above, making it a valuable investment in technology.
What is crucial is that businesses procure a high-quality product with sufficient security, uptime, and speed. After all, there is nothing worse than using a subpar proxy!
