Internet privacy and anonymity are precious values that are slowly disappearing from the modern internet. Devices, social media accounts, and IP addresses are getting linked more deeply to our real identity than ever before.
The most popular technique with the biggest upside is the change of an IP address with a proxy server. Known as simple intermediary servers, proxies act as a station between us and the final destination and assign a different IP address to data packets.
Thanks to it, the recipient or an unknown party to whom this information would be shared unwillingly loses the ability to obtain the address and trace it back to you.
Proxy servers are revered due to their simplicity and easy applicability. In both cases of casual browsing and simultaneous connections for business-related tasks, proxies offer many benefits. With multiple addresses at your disposal, you can assign different IPs to segments of your connections.
Even with diversified instances of data transmission, you can get addresses from specific locations to gain access to geo-blocked pages in your country.
However, there is an elephant in the room. Good proxies are hard to come by and usually come in the form of a paid rental service offered by lawful proxy providers. For tech-savvy internet users such investment can be avoidable, but choosing free proxies isn’t always safe. Still, as you choose a public proxy or a server from a legitimate provider, you will need a proxy checker. A free tool provided by Proxyway helps visitors test a list of proxies and their performance on their browsers. Proxy checker provides detailed information about obtained IP addresses and their performance metrics.
In this article, our goal is to assist tech-savvy internet users in their search for good proxy servers. We will focus on features of proxies, performance, address locations, and detection status.
Most common proxies
An in-depth evaluation of the proxy market — Proxy Market Research 2022, evaluates the most popular providers based on their strengths and weaknesses in popular performance metrics. Check it out to see an evaluation graph to see which companies succeed in providing a wide range of proxy services with great-performing servers and a superb user experience. The most common proxies are datacenter and residential proxies, used for business-related tasks that require stability and security.
The ability to provide IPs from different regions with minimal loss of speed is another important factor when clients try to access geo-blocked websites or end up in a digital blockade due to political situations. Some companies block visitors from other countries to minimize unnecessary traffic, but it can rob us of the opportunity to visit the page and gather valuable public information. Proxy servers located outside the US can help us gain access to those pages, and proxies in autocratic countries like Russia or China use geo-blocking and show the distorted version of the web through the eyes of a local user, to whom some obscure pages and alternatives might be available while most powerful services on the web remain behind a digital curtain.
Checking performance metrics
We can use a proxy checker to apply the obtained addresses and analyze their performance. Choose between the protocols and displayed formats, enter a list of proxies, and enter usernames and passwords if authentication is required.
Presented columns offer a simple yet informative rundown of entered proxies. The status section can help you monitor the uptime of the address, with frequent tests determining the reliability of the desired IP. Speed and location show how fast the proxy server responds. These metrics are interconnected, but the checker sends requests from a designated server and not our device, providing an estimate of speed and stability. ISP column displays internet service providers in control of tested addresses. Differences in companies can show if you are dealing with faster datacenter proxies provided by cloud hosting businesses or safer residential IPs from providers that supply the devices of everyday internet users. Of course, if all you care about is the type, the hosting section shows if it is a data center IP or not in a boolean form (True or False).
Last but not least, a known proxy shows if the address has been used and identified as a proxy server. IPs that fit these criteria experience more blocks and recognition on frequently visited websites and search engines and can even be blacklisted in their database.
With a comfortable evaluation of your addresses, you can easily choose the best IPs for specific tasks or casual browsing. Running multiple proxies at the same time helps us utilize their best features and performance metrics for separate connections. Make sure to check your IPs to get the most out of these benefits.