Hey there. If you’ve been following our blog you might be wondering who the heck is this. Most people don’t know about proxies, let alone how to choose between data centers or residential ones. But that’s the great thing about proxies. You don’t have to know everything there is to know about proxies to start using them and gaining incredible value out of them. As your proxy partner, we’re going to be here with you every step of the way because we believe in the power of proxies.
Data Center Proxies Verse Residential Proxies
Well, it brings up some concepts that many proxy providers tend to avoid, including ethics. But like said, if these terms don’t make any sense to you yet, that’s okay. You don’t have to know everything there is to know about proxies to start getting value out of them. But if there is one thing you should know, it’s the difference between your average proxy and a great proxy, and the difference between your average proxy provider and a great, ethical proxy provider. So let’s get started.
What are Proxies?
To understand the answer to this question you should know that every internet connection is assigned an IP address. This IP address helps website owners and other internet users have a general idea of who’s accessing their website, where they’re accessing it from, and what kind of device they’re using. But what if you don’t want websites and other internet users to know this information about you? That’s where proxies come in.
A proxy is an IP address that acts as a middleman between your actual IP address and the website you’re trying to access. This gives you an extra layer of security, anonymity, and access to the internet overall. So instead of the website being able to see your actual IP address, it sees the proxy IP address instead. And for the most part, this is still the same content you could access with a home connection, but now there’s an extra layer of security and anonymity that people enjoy. Those are the main benefits of using a proxy, but what are some others? One has to do with something called geolocation.
What are Data Center Proxies?
Choosing the geolocation of your proxies enhances your experience. Here’s how it works. A proxy provider will allow you to choose the location of your proxies so that whenever you connect with those proxies it appears as though you are actually in that location. This allows you to stream content, access web data, and do just about anything else from anywhere in the world. For instance, even though you might be in Germany you might wanna access content that’s only available in California. So you can get a proxy IP address from California to access that content. Want to stream foreign films and shows? Access global content so you can conduct better brand research. Simply avoid bans? Which we’ll talk about later. You can do all of this and more by choosing certain geolocations for your proxies. So now that we have a general definition of proxies, let’s talk about some common types and reasons that people may or may not want to use proxies for their use case. You know, the reason you probably started watching this video, to begin with.
So the first type of proxy wants to talk about is datacenter proxies. What are they? And what are some pros and cons? datacenter proxies are probably the most common type of proxy. And if you’re familiar with this conversation about proxies they’re probably the type of proxy that pops into your head when you hear the word proxy. These IP addresses are affiliated with a proxy provider’s data center, not an internet service provider, or ISP. This means that even though websites can’t see your actual IP address, they can still identify that the proxy you’re using is coming from a data center. And that leads to one of the main problems people run into when using data center proxies, they’re more likely to get banned.
Even though they’re less reliable, data center proxies are typically more affordable than residential proxies, and you don’t have to pay extra for bandwidth.
What’s bandwidth?
Not to be confused with internet or data speed. Bandwidth is the volume of data that can be transmitted over a connection. If you have a super high volume use case for your proxies, companies can charge you extra for this just because they can. Datacenter proxies are easier to buy in bulk, making larger projects much more manageable. And for most use cases, they really can’t open door after door after door. Ever heard of web scraping? It’s likely something you encounter every single day. If you’ve ever copied and pasted a link from one of your favorite websites, you’ve performed web scraping. If you’ve ever copied the number of followers and following from one of your favorite social media accounts you’ve performed web scraping.
What do Data Center Proxies have to do With all of that?
In short, they make web scraping a whole lot easier. Sure, if you have 10 minutes to scroll through those social media accounts to get general ideas for your brand, you probably don’t need a proxy. But what if you’re a brand manager who doesn’t need 10 minutes, but 1010 minutes every single day to get the social media data you need? Who doesn’t have time to scroll through every social media account, every about me page, every comment, every like, every follower, every…
