How to choose a proxy network for business: 3 practical advice

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Masking an IP address using a proxy is necessary not only to circumvent censorship on the Internet and watch TV shows. In recent years, proxies are increasingly being used to solve corporate problems from testing applications under load to competitive intelligence. On Habré there is a quite good overview of various options for using a proxy in business.
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Today we will talk about what to look for when choosing a proxy network for solving such corporate tasks.

How big is the pool of available addresses

Studies show that in order for blocking systems to work effectively, they must constantly expand the pool of available IP addresses.

First, it reduces the likelihood that a particular address will be detected by the censors, and secondly, the presence of a large number of connection options has a positive effect on 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 brings together 1,283,481 resident addresses.

How many countries does the proxy service support?

In addition to the number of IP, the 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 topic.

The more connectivity options available in different countries, the more effectively you can bypass various types of locks - from state to corporate.

When choosing a proxy service, you need to take into account the width 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, this is how the distribution of addresses in the top-20 locations in the Infatica system looks like:



There are more than 100 countries available.

Presence of restrictions

When using a proxy, especially for solving corporate tasks, performance plays an important role. Quite often, proxy providers impose various restrictions. This is rarely mentioned in marketing materials, but it’s easy to face traffic limits or the number of simultaneous sessions.

To avoid such inconveniences, it is necessary to directly ask a question about the presence or absence of such restrictions to the representatives of the provider. For example, we introduced the possibility of working with unlimited traffic and the number of simultaneous sessions for another 2018.

Useful links and materials from Infatica :

• Study: Creating a lock-resistant proxy service using game theory
• The story of the fight against censorship: how does the flash proxy method created by scientists from MIT and Stanford
• How to understand when a proxy is lying: verification of the physical locations of network proxies using an active geolocation algorithm
• How to disguise on the Internet: compare server and resident proxies