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Proxy glossary

What is a SOCKS5 proxy?

SOCKS5 is a proxy protocol that relays raw TCP connections for any application, where an HTTP proxy only understands web requests.

SOCKS5 explained

An HTTP proxy reads your request line and headers. A SOCKS5 proxy works one layer lower: your client asks it to connect to a host and port, and after that the bytes pass through untouched. That makes it the option for traffic that is not HTTP, such as a database client or an SSH session. The protocol also defines UDP relaying, which many proxy services do not offer.

The part that trips people up is DNS. With a socks5:// URL, curl and Python resolve the hostname on your machine; with socks5h://, the proxy resolves it. For scraping you almost always want socks5h, so the DNS answer matches the exit IP and your own resolver never sees the lookup.

For ordinary web scraping, HTTP and SOCKS5 give the same result. Use SOCKS5 when the tool only speaks SOCKS or the traffic is not HTTP.

For example

Python Requests needs an extra package for SOCKS: pip install "requests[socks]". Then put a socks5h:// URL in the proxies dict where the http:// one went.

terminal
curl -x socks5h://USER:PASS@IP:PORT https://httpbin.org/ip

Swap in your own credentials from the dashboard. It also lists the host and port for each order; where they differ from this example, the dashboard is right.

How it works at ProxyMonkey

  • All three lines speak HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5. Your dashboard lists the host, port and credentials for each order.

All proxy terms, A to Z

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