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Proxy glossary

What is an ASN?

An ASN (autonomous system number) identifies the network that owns an IP address, such as a home broadband provider or a cloud host.

ASN explained

Also called autonomous system number.

Every public IP belongs to a block announced by one autonomous system. Look an IP up in whois or any IP-info service and the ASN tells you who runs it: a consumer ISP, a mobile carrier, a university or a hosting company.

Anti-bot systems check it first because the lookup is free and instant. A request from an ASN belonging to a cloud provider is unlikely to be a person at a browser, and many sites challenge or block it on that alone. Residential and ISP proxies exist to present a consumer ASN.

The ASN is also how you catch a provider selling datacenter IPs as residential.

For example

Run whois on the exit IP your cheap "residential" proxy gave you. If the organisation is a hosting company, you have been paying residential prices for datacenter traffic.

How it works at ProxyMonkey

  • We publish the ASN type behind every IP we hand you, so you can check the label yourself.

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