SOCKS Proxy
A proxy that operates at the TCP layer. Can carry any TCP traffic — useful for SSH, gaming, and non-browser apps.
SOCKS (Socket Secure) is a protocol family for routing TCP (and, in SOCKS5, UDP) traffic through a proxy. Unlike HTTP proxies, SOCKS does not understand or interpret the application protocol — it just opens a tunnel and shuffles bytes back and forth. This makes SOCKS the right tool when you need to proxy something other than HTTP traffic.
SOCKS4 supports IPv4 TCP only. SOCKS5 adds IPv6, UDP, authentication, and remote DNS resolution. Most modern clients support SOCKS5.
Common use cases for SOCKS: routing SSH connections, proxying non-browser applications, gaming clients, BitTorrent traffic, and any custom TCP protocol. For browser and scraping work that speaks HTTP, an HTTP proxy is simpler and more widely supported.
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