ISP proxies, also known as static residential proxies, use IP addresses that are only associated with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) thus making end-users not needed. This is because ISP proxies are a combination of the top qualities of residential and datacenter proxies, so all the IPs are hosted on a server instead of a device.
ISP proxies were once just datacenter IP addresses but then were registered under an Internet Service Provider, hence their name. They are still relatively new so they’re still quite rare but more and more proxy providers are offering them.
ISP Proxies
As ISP proxies have the best qualities of residential and datacenter proxies, they’re fast, reliable, and hard to detect. They’re fast because ISP proxies don’t need to rely on the unstable connection of end-users and rely instead on fast and stable servers which means you have an almost perfect uptime. They also have a good IP reputation with websites so they are harder to detect and also less likely to get banned.
Another benefit you would enjoy when using ISP proxies is high anonymity. Since you’re using an IP address that’s under internet service providers, websites would see you as a genuine user instead of someone just using a proxy. You would also have unlimited bandwidth as most proxy providers charge you by the number of IP addresses rather than the amount of traffic you consume.
Disadvantages of ISP Proxies
ISP proxies also have their fair share of weaknesses. Some of which are:
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Expensive. ISP proxy providers set quite a high price point for ISP IPs because they can be extremely hard to get, though still not as high as mobile proxies.
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Few locations. The same weakness as datacenter proxies, ISP proxies need to be held in physical servers all around the world and there would only be a few available countries you can connect to.
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Limited subnets. The IP addresses you’ll be using when utilizing ISP proxies are limited to a few subnets only. Although ISP proxies still have more subnets than datacenter IPs, the number of subnets is still not close to residential IPs.
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False identification on ISP proxies. Sometimes, websites will think that ISP IPs are datacenter IPs. This will completely nullify one of the biggest benefits that ISP proxies bring, which is high anonymity.
When To Use ISP Proxies?
There are many use cases where you can have a proxy server with ISP proxies. They’re best used for tasks where you would need to do automation tools on a highly protected website. Social media websites and e-commerce websites are good examples of this. You can switch through different IP addresses at your leisure and all of those IP addresses would have a good IP reputation.
Another popular use for ISP proxies would be sneaker botting. As most foot sites and sneaker sites have extremely strict restrictions against the use of bots and have implemented advanced systems to detect bot usage, you would need a proxy type that’s hard to detect and difficult to ban. ISP proxies fit this bill.
You can also use ISP proxies for web scraping, though you do have to consider your budget and the websites you want to scrape. If you have a lower budget and just want to scrape average protected websites, then you can use residential proxies and even datacenter proxies for the task. If you do have a big enough budget and want to scrape the heavily protected websites, then you can consider using ISP proxies. SEO monitoring would also be applicable.
Conclusion
ISP proxies offer you the best benefits that residential proxies and datacenter proxies have, like the speed of datacenter proxies and the anonymity of residential proxy networks, but you would also get some of their disadvantages. A glaring weakness ISP proxies have are their high price point which would discourage most users. In the future though, when ISP proxies become more widespread, we can maybe see their prices hopefully dropping.
