It’s always sold as a bit of a bonus, the fact that your IP address will rotate automatically without you doing anything but that’s not actually how proxies work. There are lots of rotating residential proxies for sale nowadays, indeed it’s only when you start to look for static residential proxies that you realize how rare they actually are ! This has become a bit of a problem as a static residential IP has become essential for many tasks indeed you’ll often get blocked without them.
Sure you can find a few dedicated proxies but often that refers to the hardware and not the actual IP addresses they use to connect with. Yet for many of us the automatic swapping of our static IP address every few minutes doesn’t really sound like a bonus and it’s not how a standard proxy works. If you think logically the majority of us are using proxies and VPNs to mimic user behaviour and keep our own identity secret especially on social media. So if you’re managing an Instagram account or trying to snag some extra tickets on Ticketmaster, then we would only need to swap IP addresses on every new identity otherwise we’ll still get blocked.
Yet using most rotating residential proxies you’ll find your address changes all the time. There are some providers who give you a little more control, like for example the guys at Rotating Proxies . However most won’t let you keep the same address for very long, it’s tough to find a static residential proxy! The reason is that the rotation is not normally for your benefit it’s simply because of the way they source all these residential IPs.
Residential IP addresses like mobile addresses are also tough to get hold of, that’s partly why they are so valuable. The normal route is to sign up with your local Internet service provider for a broadband account. Then you’ll be assigned a residential IP address when you connect to their gateway – this usually doesn’t change much and is normally a static IP. That’s normally it, the supply of residential addresses is restricted to these providers which obviously won’t be available in large blocks to proxy service providers. So making any number of static residential proxies is extremely difficult especially with any volume of addresses.
How to Make Residential Proxies
To get these residential IPs takes some effort, there’s no way to simply buy static residential IPs off the shelf unfortunately. Some companies lease them directly from users with fast internet connections. Others sign up for accounts themselves or perhaps have a few contacts within the ISPs themselves. All these methods are extremely expensive and labour intensive which is why residential IP addresses cost so much and why creating a residential proxy is so difficult. There are other ways to obtain much larger ranges of residential IPs however these aren’t always ethical and to be honest you’d probably be safer using datacenter proxies anyway.
The Secret Method Used to Create Static Residential Proxies
As mentioned, it’s really difficult to get large amounts of residential addresses even with contacts and resources. However over the last few years innovative methods have emerged which do make it possible. Arguably the first company to develop this concept was someone called Luminati who developed a simple software VPN called Hola to create their proxy network. This was available for free all over the internet and soon had literally millions of users from all over the world.
Although the software was free to use and worked perfectly well, there was a hidden cost. Tucked away in the terms and conditions of the software (which you’d never find unless you made a real effort) was a statement saying that you agreed to a proportion of your internet connection and bandwidth to be used while the software was active. So when you fired up Hola VPN your connection and static IP instantly became part of an enormous P2P network.
This is the reason why Luminati has such a large network of residential IP addresses, they’re all actually residential computers using the Hola VPN. Other companies have developed this idea and through offering various applications, computer software or services obtain the use of residential connections. So for example, a company will offer some sort of program or maybe a development kit and in exchange they’ll use their IP address and bandwidth when online.
The problem is that there’s only minimal control over access to the IP address, it’s only accessible when the end user has their computer on and it is accessible. This could change at any minute which is why it’s so difficult to maintain a guaranteed static address for any length of time. Luminati do offer the facility of ‘sticky ip addresses’ in their residential proxies which rotate less often but there still not guaranteed for long and cost a little extra too. These addresses do go some way to solving the problems about rotating IPs. These IP addresses stay static long enough to act as very good sneaker proxies for instance and to be used for other e-Commerce transactions.
Visit Luminati here.
Update – July 2020 – Luminati have released a new range of static residential IPs direct from an internet service provider. Not tested these static residential proxies yet but if these are truly a real IP range from an internet service provider ISP then they should be well worth checking out! Hopefully not too expensive!
The Illegal Variant of Creating a Pool of Static Residential IPs
Now of course although this business process is slightly dubious. Especially when the majority of users have no idea that they’ve agreed to lease out their internet connections, it’s probably fairly legal. As long as those disclaimers and and requirements are listed somewhere in the terms and conditions then the companies can legitimately defend their positions as a proxy provider.
There is an even more dubious variant of this method used to create IP proxies which is increasing to grow exponentially over the last few years. It’s to leverage the power of huge botnets which exist all over the internet. These are large pools of mostly hacked and malware infected computers which can be controlled by a central owner. Normally used for operating DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks their operators have discovered another lucrative (and probably slightly safer) use of their hacked computer connections – that is renting them out for use in residential proxies and VPNs.
If the IP addresses are kept relatively clean and not used for spamming or attacks then they can be much more valuable used in this way. Proxy companies can pay for access to pools of residential IP addresses controlled on these vast botnets. In reality most of these static proxies are abused simply to generate income. They do have real IPs, yet they’re often blacklisted due to the malware on them and good for nothing much more than web scraping. They can be cheap, but that’s because they’re illegal. Do you want to use them? Nope me neither.
For a Static Residential IPs – Most Rotating Proxies Don’t Work
It’s usually agreed that Luminati is the best residential proxy provider overall. They’re certainly the biggest and they have invested heavily in things like their Proxy manager dashboard. This gives you amazing flexibility and control over your outbound connections and the IP addresses you use. There is a bit of a learning curve though and the cost may be prohibitive for some purposes. Also the sticky IP feature doesn’t keep your IP address static for long.
For those who’s static address is a priority then there is a company who operate their backconnect residential proxies using addresses over their own hardware. This is the crucial factor when you need control over when the IP addresses rotate.
Their name is Storm Proxies.
If you want better control over your addresses then they’re probably the best static residential proxies you can find. They’re also a well respected firm who have been in this market since pretty much the beginning. Try out their options for yourself, Storm will honor their refund guarantee unlike many companies!
So when you’re looking for a residential proxy company then you should be asking questions like
“Can I have a Static residential IP Address”
“Can I keep the same address for a month”
“Are these residential IPs good for Social media?”
“Where do you get your residential IPs from?”
Remember anyone who’s using any of these ‘free methods’ of gaining access to residential IP addresses has very little control. Even if they have direct access to the address pool then they’re dependent on what the clients do and how long they’re online. A particular IP address is only available while the connection is valid, so there’s no direct control over anything other than the backconnect connection back to the proxy.