Glossary

Proxy & Networking Glossary

Short, plain-English definitions for the terms you will see when shopping for or working with proxies.

Anonymous Proxy

A proxy that hides your real IP but identifies itself as a proxy via standard HTTP headers. Middle anonymity tier.

A proxy whose IPs are hosted in commercial datacenters. Fast, cheap, and effective for the majority of workloads.

A proxy that hides both your real IP and the fact that a proxy is in use. The default for any serious commercial use.

A proxy server that handles HTTP and HTTPS traffic. The default type used by browsers and most scraping tools.

A proxy authentication method that allows only specified source IPs to use the proxy. No credentials required.

A proxy IP assigned exclusively to one customer. Clean reputation, predictable performance, higher cost than shared.

A server that sits between your device and the internet, forwarding requests on your behalf so destinations see its IP, not yours.

A proxy whose IPs come from consumer ISPs (residential broadband, mobile). Harder to detect than datacenter, but slower and more expensive.

A proxy that sits in front of origin servers (not clients). Used by Cloudflare, nginx, and most production web stacks.

A proxy setup that assigns a different IP to each request (or session) from a managed pool. Common in high-volume scraping.

A proxy IP used by multiple customers at the same time. Cheaper than private, with reputation shaped by everyone using it.

A proxy that operates at the TCP layer. Can carry any TCP traffic — useful for SSH, gaming, and non-browser apps.

A proxy configuration that keeps the same IP for a session or fixed window, so multi-step workflows finish from one IP.

A proxy that forwards your real IP in HTTP headers. Useless for privacy — used by corporate or ISP caches.

A string in HTTP request headers that identifies the browser, OS, and device. Used by servers to tailor what they serve.

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