Glossary
Proxy glossary
The words you meet when you buy and run proxies. One sentence each, an example you will recognise, and what it means on ProxyMonkey where that differs.
Terms from A to Z
A
- ASN
- An ASN (autonomous system number) identifies the network that owns an IP address, such as a home broadband provider or a cloud host.
B
- Backconnect gateway
- A backconnect gateway is one proxy host and port that forwards each of your connections to one of many exit IPs behind it.
- Bandwidth metering
- Bandwidth metering is how a proxy provider counts the traffic it bills you for, usually in gigabytes.
C
- CGNAT
- CGNAT is carrier-grade NAT, where an internet provider puts many customers behind a small set of shared public IP addresses.
- CONNECT method
- CONNECT is the HTTP request a client sends to a proxy to open a raw tunnel to a host and port, which is how HTTPS traffic passes through an HTTP proxy.
D
- Datacenter proxy
- A datacenter proxy is an IP address owned by a hosting or cloud company and served from a server in a rack.
- Dedicated proxy
- A dedicated proxy is an IP address that only you use for as long as you rent it, where a shared proxy splits one IP between several customers.
- DNS leak
- A DNS leak is when hostname lookups go to your own resolver instead of through the proxy or VPN, so someone can see which sites you visit.
G
- Geo-targeting
- Geo-targeting means choosing the country, region or city of your proxy's exit IP, so a site serves you its local version.
H
- HTTP proxy
- An HTTP proxy is a server that takes web requests from your client and makes them for you, so the target sees the proxy's IP address.
I
- IP pool
- An IP pool is the set of IP addresses a proxy service can route your traffic through.
- IP whitelisting
- IP whitelisting lets a proxy accept connections from your server's IP address without asking for a username and password.
- ISP proxy
- An ISP proxy is a static IP address hosted in a data centre but registered to a consumer internet provider, so it looks residential and does not rotate.
P
- Proxy authentication
- Proxy authentication is how a proxy checks a connection is yours, usually with a username and password or by recognising your IP address.
R
- Rate limiting
- Rate limiting is a site capping how many requests one client can make in a given time, then slowing or rejecting the rest.
- Residential proxy
- A residential proxy sends your requests out through an IP address that an internet provider assigned to someone's home connection.
- robots.txt
- robots.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a website that tells crawlers which paths the owner would like them to leave alone.
- Rotating proxy
- A rotating proxy gives you a different exit IP address from a pool on each request or connection, without you changing any settings.
S
- SOCKS5
- SOCKS5 is a proxy protocol that relays raw TCP connections for any application, where an HTTP proxy only understands web requests.
- socks5h
- socks5h:// is a proxy URL scheme where the proxy resolves the target hostname, while with socks5:// your own machine looks the name up first.
- Sticky session
- A sticky session keeps you on the same exit IP from a rotating pool for a set time, so a multi-step flow looks like one visitor.
T
- TLS fingerprint
- A TLS fingerprint is a short signature of the options a client offers in its TLS ClientHello, which sites use to tell HTTP clients and browsers apart.
U
- User agent
- The user agent is the User-Agent request header, in which a client names itself: a browser and its version, or an HTTP library.
W
- WebRTC leak
- A WebRTC leak is a browser exposing your real local or public IP address through WebRTC, bypassing the proxy that carries your ordinary page traffic.
Know the words, still stuck?
The setup guides show each term in working code, and the blog covers what goes wrong once a scraper is running.
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