Datacenter Proxies: The Complete Guide

Datacenter proxies have become an essential part of setting up a cost-effective proxy server. They’re fast, reliable, and easy on your pocket.

So in this article, we’ll be discussing the complete guide to datacenter proxies, what they are, how they work, their advantages and disadvantages, and their use cases.

What Are Datacenter Proxies?

Datacenter Proxies are IP addresses that are not associated with any Internet Service Provider (ISP). Their IP addresses come from datacenter servers that are owned by web hosting companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS). There are three types of datacenter proxies:

Free Datacenter Proxies. Also called Public Proxies. These types of proxies are ones you can find online for free. It’s recommended that you don’t use these types of proxies as they’re unreliable and may even be the reason hackers can steal your data.
Shared Datacenter Proxies. When using shared proxies, your sharing the bandwidth with other users. Since multiple users are sharing a single IP address, this causes the connection to be slow. They’re still good enough for simple tasks and are much better compared to free proxies.
Private Datacenter Proxies. Also known as Dedicated Proxies. You’ll be the only one using these types of proxies. They give you the fasted speed and the most control, but they’re also the most expensive of the three.

How Do Datacenter Proxies Work?

Datacenter proxies work the same as any proxy server. They act as a gateway between your device and the internet, so your incoming or outgoing traffic will be routed towards the proxy server.

Any website you visit or web application you use will only be able to see the IP address of the proxy server, and your IP address will be hidden.

You can easily switch between multiple IP addresses, whether manually switching it yourself or automatically switching through a rotating proxy network.

You can also change locations by choosing an IP address from the location you want to be. For example, if you want to change your location to the United States, you simply choose a US proxy. Screenshot 2022-08-01 210029.jpg

Advantages Of Datacenter Proxies

Datacenter proxies have a lot of advantages, some of which are:

Fast Connection. Datacenter proxies have the fastest internet connection out of all the proxy types. Their speeds could reach to 10Gbps, but you can usually find them at 1Gbps.
Almost Perfect Uptime. Datacenter proxies are hosted by reliable servers, so most proxy providers can ensure that you’ll have 99% uptime when using them.
Affordable. Datacenter proxies are quite cheap as their relatively simple to make and maintain. Proxy providers simply have to rent IP addresses from those web hosting companies and then lend them to users.

Disadvantages Of Datacenter Proxies

Datacenter proxies also have some disadvantages, a few of which are:

Easily Detected. Datacenter proxies can be easily detected by heavily protected websites such as Facebook or Google.

Your datacenter IP address can get banned, and losing one would be a huge loss for you, as you’ll be charged per IP address by proxy providers.

Subnet Bans. Proxy providers sell datacenter IPs in ranges called subnets. If a website decides to ban that specific subnet, then all the IP addresses inside that subnet will also be banned.

Use Cases For Datacenter Proxies

The best use cases for datacenter proxies are when you need to use several IP addresses at once. For example, if you want to create multiple accounts, and you want to tie in each account with an individual IP address, then datacenter proxies are the way to go.

Using datacenter proxies for web scraping and sneaker botting are also possible, just be careful with heavily protected websites as those types of websites will easily be able to detect your proxy usage. The success rate for datacenter proxies on those types of websites will significantly decrease.

Conclusion

Datacenter proxies are your go-to option if you want to simply browse the internet anonymously, change your location to access geo-restricted content, and do simple web automation.

Although, they do have their weaknesses too. Just keep in mind that their success rate goes down when dealing with protected websites. Make sure to form an informed decision on whether or not datacenter proxies are good enough for your needs.