Alright so I'm trying to wrap my head around backconnect proxies for scraping and everyone says they're the holy grail but my speed tests are giving me weird numbers I've been running campaigns through a few providers on PropellerAds where latency is everything and these so-called 'rotating' residential backconnect networks are just inconsistent sometimes I get 20ms ping and a CR that looks promising then the next hour it's 200ms and my whole campaign tanks feels like paying for a mystery box of IPs Been there tested that with three different networks and the results are all over the place one provider had great geo-targeting but their rotation logic was too aggressive for my landing page pre-loads another had stable speeds but their IP pool got flagged by an ad network after like two days of scaling honestly I think the backconnect marketing is just fluff if you're not running smth massive like sneaker bots or social media automation it's probably overkill and a waste of cap
man, those were the days, right? used to fire up some residential proxies and go wild, no cap. now its like navigating a minefield, gotta watch every move, every request, or get flagged faster than you can say 'captcha'. used to grab info with a few simple proxies, no headache, no fuss. now its all about rotating tiers, anti-detection this and that, like the game changed overnight. honestly miss the old days when you could just get a decent proxy, run your tool, and not worry about being banned in five minutes. anyone else feel nostalgic for the simpler times or am i just too old school?
okay so i need proxies for getting around ticket limits on major sites. not trying to resell just want seats for me and friends. tired of losing out to bots with my own bot. i tried some cheap datacenter ips last week, got insta-banned from two platforms before even hitting checkout. makes me think they're fingerprinting the subnet. residential feels like using a bazooka on a mouse here but maybe that's the move? or are there decent mobile proxies that won't make my wallet cry? data or it didn't happen people, what's actually working now? i'm running my own scripts not some off-the-shelf thing so integration is flexible. also ahrefs and semrush are great for competitors but utterly useless for this lmao.
Yo guys just found out that using residential proxies for ad verification totally works like magic. Tried a bunch of datacenter and mobile proxies before but they got flagged or blocked fast. These residentials though, seem legit, they mimic real users so ads don't bounce. The best part? I finally got some consistent results and no more suspect flags. Been scraping ad networks and doing some quick checks, and it's like a whole new world. Anyone else using these for legit ad checks? Tips or proxy providers you trust? Feels like I cracked a code or somethin.
alright a lot of you are asking about proxy rotation with Python and the price versus quality debate it's getting messy because all the tutorials focus on using requests and a simple list-comprehension and that is a surefire way to nuke those expensive residential IPs back to the stone age you need to be smarter with your session handling and your failure logic, mixing timeouts with response validation or you'll just hammer the dead proxies until they scream and get your whole subnet banned you know back in the day you could just rotate a hundred datacenter IPs and scrape all day but now those detection systems are looking for the patterns in your rotation speed and your concurrent threads more than the IPs themselves. I've had to build out a whole system for a client that scrapes product listings and it's got two proxy pools a primary pool of premium geo-specific residentials with sticky sessions that are costly per gig and a secondary pool of cheaper datacenter IPs that handle the retry logic and the health checks, so when the good proxy fails a simple request it gets a cooldown timer and the system temporarily pulls from the backup and let me tell you the cost per successful request dropped by like 60%, quality isn't just about buying the most expensive IPs it's about not wasting the bandwidth you already paid for, server-side tracking is non-negotiable for any serious campaign in 2024 and it's the same principle here your infrastructure logic is what saves you money not just the raw materials. So for your Python script you gotta think about implementing a proper proxy manager class that tracks success rates, response times, and handles backoff for failures automatically, and maybe even rotates user-agents per session tied to the proxy IP because you can have the cleanest residential in the world but if your fingerprint is the same every time you're still getting blocked and that's just you paying a premium to get blocked, makes me nostalgic for when you could just throw more IPs at a problem until it worked. So how are you guys managing your proxy lifecycle to justify the cost - anyone actually calculating cost per successful request or just hoping for the best?
tbh been testing a few residential proxies lately and trying to figure out the real cost per GB. some providers say they're cheap but then I see hidden fees or they throttle bandwidth. I ran speed tests on a few and here's what I got: provider A gives me about 1.2 MB/sec on average and it costs 50 bucks for 10 GB, so about 5 bucks per GB. provider B is a bit slower but costs only 3 bucks per GB, with speeds around 0.8 MB/sec. question is, am I better off with a slightly cheaper provider with slower speeds or paying more for faster proxies? I wanna make sure I'm not overpaying but also not sacrificing too much speed for scraping or anti-detection stuff. anyone done real cost/benefit breakdowns here?
okay, so here i am, stuck on this old school dilemma. remember the days when you could just get a decent residential proxy for like a buck a gb and it actually worked for ticket scalping? those days feel like a lifetime ago. now everything's more expensive and the quality? kinda hit or miss. i'm trying to figure out if the good old cheap residentials are still worth it or if i should just go datacenter or mobile proxies and pay the premium. had some rough runs with newer providers lately, so i keep wondering if the cheap ones from back in the day still hold up or if they're just dead and buried. anyone got a nostalgic fave or recent experience to share? just trying to get a sense if the old tricks still work or if i should just bite the bullet and upgrade.
look, i'm sitting here at the airport remembering when you could buy a subnet and it'd just work. anyways, wanted to give a heads up. been using the same big name provider for over two years now for my geo-targeted scraping. set up a new batch of accounts last week, everything looked fine on their dashboard. woke up this morning to zero data because every single uk residential ip in my pool got blacklisted overnight. no email from them, no warning in the panel, nothing. they just silently rotated them out with fresh ones that had different geotags. my campaign is toast obviously. but more importantly it makes me wonder what else they're changing without telling anyone. back in the day providers would at least send an alert about major ip pool changes. now you just find out when your automation breaks and you've burned your accounts.
so yeah, if you're relying on geo-stable ips from any of the major players right now maybe double-check your logs today. who else has had their 'sticky' sessions just vanish recently?
Alright, so I just stumbled onto a deal that actually works for free proxies. I know right, sounds like a unicorn chasing a rainbow, but hear me out. Turns out there are some hidden gems hiding behind paywalls disguised as free proxies. It's like finding a $20 bill on the street but in proxy form. These are legit, decent speeds, no constant disconnects, and most importantly, no shady popups telling me I've been hacked or I'm gonna die. I've been testing for a couple of days and the CVR on my scraping stuff actually looks stable. Crazy right? Usually free proxies are a roulette wheel, spin and hope, but this one feels more like a charity I wouldn't mind supporting. Now I'm not saying it's perfect, but honestly, I'd rather spend my time tweaking these free ones than tossing cash at some dodgy reseller with a fancy website. Anyone else tired of getting burned on 'free' proxies that are basically just trojan horses for spam? Or is this some kinda miracle I should keep quiet about?
Alright, so I finally jumped on the backconnect proxy train after reading about how it's the secret sauce to scraping like a boss. Tried to set up one myself, watched like 27 YouTube tutorials, and ended up more confused than ever. Is it just me or is the whole thing kinda like trying to understand quantum physics but for proxies? Basically, everyone talks about backconnects like they're the holy grail, but honestly I feel like I need a PhD just to understand if I'm using them right or just throwing money at a fancy rotating bot net. Tried a few providers, got some decent hits, but then I notice my IPs getting flagged faster than a TikTok influencer in a controversial dance. I keep reading that backconnects are anti-detection but man, it feels like I'm just squeezing juice from a stone. Can someone with real experience weigh in? Are they worth the trouble or just another spammy buzzword? Would love some real reviews and recommendations because frankly I don't want to keep wasting time and cash chasing a pipe dream. Or am I just doing it wrong? RIP to my sanity.
Alright need a specific recommendation fast I'm trying to integrate a new scraping tool into my stack and it requires residential proxies with good API support for rotation none of the usual reviews talk about actual integration headaches just speed tests Currently using a provider thats okay on pricing but their API is clunky takes forever to fetch a new IP and the docs are garbage need something that plugs directly into common tools like Scrapy or Puppeteer without weird auth steps Looked at Bright Data their setup seems smooth but pricing is insane maybe Oxylabs same issue anyone actually running a cheaper provider with solid API and real residential IPs not datacenter masked as residential I can't afford another week debugging proxy connections before my next campaign launch
Woke up to a dead campaign because my residential proxy pool was crawling at like 2000ms average response time lost a whole day of scaling and it's the provider I've been using for months their dashboard showed all green but the actual requests were timing out mid-session My bad for trusting their built-in speed test it's just pinging their own servers doesn't mean squat for real world use you need to test with your actual tool puppeteer selenium whatever and measure from session start to first meaningful action I scripted a quick check that hits a target site three times and logs the real completion time not some vanity metric Creative testing is more important than targeting but if your proxies are junk you can't even get the creatives in front of anyone anyone else have a solid method beyond just pinging google.com
Hey guys I just started doing affiliate marketing a few weeks ago and I'm trying to scrape some competitor LPs for ideas but every site I try to visit says they blocked my proxy, it's so frustrating, I bought these residential proxies from that big provider everyone talks about but they keep getting flagged, I set up the browser with Puppeteer like the tutorial said but nothing works. idk what to check, is it because my browser fingerprint is wrong or maybe the proxy IP is bad quality? My friend told me to use anti-detection browsers but that seems expensive and complicated, can someone please explain step by step how sites actually catch you using a proxy? Like what signals do they look for? I really need this to work because I want to see what landing pages are getting traffic in my niche, right now I'm stuck and feel like I wasted money on these proxies.
Honestly, I see so many folks still tossing around free proxies and think its some kinda magic fix. Spoiler, it aint. First off, free proxies are a nightmare for stability. They bounce in and out, slow down your process and most of the time they just dead endpoints that don't really work. Second, security. You never know who's really running that free proxy. It could be logging your traffic, stealing your cookies, or worse. And that puts your whole operation at risk. Third, detection rates skyrocket with free proxies. Sites are on high alert now, especially with all the bot detection tech they got. Using a free one is basically asking to get banned or flagged. I've done plenty tests with paid proxies, and the difference is night and day. Paid proxies come with legit support, better IP pools, and most importantly, they're less likely to get your account locked. If you're serious about scraping or automation, just don't cut corners. Save some coin upfront, but don't shoot yourself in the foot with sketchy free proxies. Ymmv, but I'd rather spend a few bucks on quality and sleep easier. Think about it, why gamble on free stuff when your business depends on it?
ok so i posted about proxies maybe a year ago right stuck with all the basic ones everyone talks about. anywaaay i finally found something that actually works for my scraping stuff which is wild cause i was so done with proxies that ban instantly or are just way too slow not worth the trouble at all. ended up testing brightdata smartproxy oxylabs again just checking if things improved tbh its totally different now? thought i'd get the same old runaround but brightdata really got their residential ips sorted pools are legit dont die immediately. smartproxy was surprisingly good way cheaper than i thought too oxylabs yeah still crazy expensive but for specific jobs where you need stealth its worth it if you're trying to scrape properly w/o getting caught. so yeah anyone have recent experience here any new favorites? im pumped messing with these more would love some new recs though or heads up if someone got burned recently
Remember when we just threw on a random residential and hoped for the best? Back then, speed was king but it was a gamble. No real tests, just vibes. Now? Every provider claims top speed, but reality bites. I ran a speed test last week on a well-known residential, got 50 Mbps. Good, right? But then I hit the same provider with a scraping proxy and it was crawling at 10 Mbps. No joke. The methodology back then was simple. Now? You gotta measure latency, jitter, throughput, connection stability, all while doing real work. Just slapping a speed test widget and calling it a day won't cut it anymore. I remember the days when proxies were cheap, plentiful and fast. Now? Price is steep, quality is inconsistent and speed testing? It's a game of cat and mouse. The tech evolved, but the fundamentals still matter. Still makes me nostalgic for those early days, when proxies just worked and we didn't need a PhD in network engineering.
i gotta blow the lid on something that's been eating up my margins lately. Mobile proxies. Yeah, those mobile IPs that promise the world but turn out to be a total nightmare. I recently jumped on a provider that was dirt cheap, sounded too good to be true, and of course it was. Quality? Non-existent. Speed? Ruined my scraping ops. Stability? Non-existent. And the worst part? These jokers are charging top dollar for IPs that get blocked faster than you can say RIP your campaign.
Alright, I'm stuck in decision paralysis and could use some real user input. Trying to lock down a reliable proxy provider for a new high-volume web data project. My current ISP proxies are fine but not cutting it for everything, thinking of supplementing with a dedicated residential pool. Narrowed it down to the big three - BrightData, Smartproxy, and Oxylabs. Seen all the marketing features lists but they all sound the same after a point. What's missing is the practical setup details for actual scraping. Things like how smooth their API integration really is when you're hitting 10k+ requests an hour without getting blocked instantly. More importantly, I keep hearing conflicting reports about their anti-bot detection success rates on modern sites with Cloudflare or PerimeterX. My specific need is session control for multi-step form submissions across geo-targeted locations. Would love to hear from anyone who's run them side-by-side on similar tasks lately. Not just speed tests, but stability over weeks and how their support handles ban waves
Just did some tests with a few proxy providers and wow it's kinda nostalgic. Back in the day you could run a basic datacenter proxy with some script kiddie browser tweaks and get like 100ms latency, enough for most scraping stuff without too much hassle. Now I'm messing around with modern anti-detect setups using resi proxies and fingerprint spoofing. The numbers are kinda funny but sad - one big provider gave me like 850ms avg response time, another was around 600 but had a crazy 40% failure rate on connections during the test. imo it feels like we swapped raw speed for this endless game of cat and mouse with detection, idk if it's even worth it sometimes when simple tasks take forever.
Been reading specs and still don't get it. For actual scraping or automation, does the protocol version matter if the IP is flagged anyway? Like, are v6 pools 'cleaner' cuz they're newer or just a marketing gimmick to charge more per GB? My current provider just rolled out v6 support and their blog post reads like a sci-fi novel, all 'next-generation infrastructure'. Feels like overcomplicating things.