If you’re in the market for a proxy, one type you’ll often come across is the datacenter proxy. With this proxy type, your device’s traffic passes through a server in a datacenter before being forwarded to the online resource you’re trying to access. Many people choose datacenter proxies because of their lower cost and excellent performance. If you’re interested in learning more about datacenter proxies, this guide is for you. We’ll cover everything you need to know about this proxy type to help you decide if it’s the right choice for you. Let’s start with a brief overview.
Executive Summary
Datacenter proxies are a common proxy type that is known for offering fast performance, scalability, and lower costs when compared to other proxy types. However, their main downside is that their IPs are much easier to detect and block since they come from servers and not real user devices. This makes datacenter proxies less ideal for tasks where high anonymity is a top priority.
What Are Datacenter Proxies?
Datacenter proxies are a proxy type that routes your device traffic through IP addresses of servers hosted in datacenters in various regions. That means your connection will appear like it is coming from an IP address of the proxy server, making it more anonymous.
Just like with other proxy types, using datacenter proxies makes it harder for websites to track your usage behavior since they don’t know your real IP address and location. Buy datacenter proxies to access region-locked content and improve privacy of your connection when browsing the web.
Core Architecture
The core architecture of datacenter proxies include these key components:
- Proxy Servers: These are physical or virtual servers that are hosted in a datacenter. Their main role is to process your requests and forward them to the website and online service you intend to access.
- IP Pools: These are IP addresses generated by cloud providers and hosting companies.
- Load Balancers: Most datacenter proxies include load balancers that automatically route user traffic to different servers based on factors like server health and resource availability. This helps reduce downtime and also ensures user requests are evenly distributed among servers to maintain good performance.
- Gateway Nodes: These are the entry points for the user requests. They also act as the authentication layer for proxies that require user authentication before connection.
- Monitoring and Control Systems: Most datacenter proxy services also include monitoring systems for tracking performance, bandwidth usage, and IP health.
IP Types and Pool Composition
As stated earlier, datacenter proxies use IP addresses sourced from cloud providers and hosting companies. This makes it easier to get large IP pools compared to other proxy types. The two common types of IP addresses offered with datacenter proxies include shared and dedicated IPs. Here is how they differ:
- Shared IPs: These are used by multiple users. They are often cheaper, but offer the least privacy, are slower, and more prone to detection and IP bans.
- Dedicated IPs: With this type, every IP is assigned to a single user, offering better performance and lowering the likelihood of IP bans. However, they usually cost more than using shared IPs.
Performance Benchmarks & Limits
As covered earlier in this guide, datacenter proxies are known for offering great performance, scalability, and stability. Here are some common metrics that you may need to know about these proxies:
- Speed: The bandwidth of datacenter proxies usually ranges between 100Mbps and 10Gbps depending on the server infrastructure.
- Latency: Datacenter proxies usually offer the least latency when compared to other proxy types. It typically ranges between 5 to 50 ms.
- Uptime: Datacenter proxies also offer the highest uptime—typically ranges between 99% to 99.99%, depending on the proxy provider.
- Concurrent Connections: These proxies can handle hundreds or even thousands of simultaneous connections. This makes them highly scalable and ideal for tasks like large scale data scraping that may require sending multiple requests at the same time.
Common Use Cases
Some of the common use cases of datacenter proxies include:
- Large scale data scraping
- SEO monitoring
- Testing performance of web apps and websites in different regions
- Ad verification to determine if ads are displayed as intended in different regions
- Accessing restricted content and websites in certain regions