What is a Backconnect Proxy and What is It Used For?

From the articles that we post in our blog, you have already learned how normal regular proxies help our clients in their day-to-day online missions. Such proxies work wonderfully if you do not have a need for repetitive requests of a site with an anti-spam or some other type of protection system. For missions involving numerous consecutive requests sent to one web resource, you will need to engage a special type of proxy called backconnect (or rotating) proxy.

Such proxies can change their IPs for each session during web scraping operations on websites sensitive to data scraping or parsing. And where a single regular proxy can get you detected and eventually banned from the site, with a backconnect proxy you will be able to accomplish your mission and gather all of the required info.
In this article, we will uncover some of the details of using backconnect proxies and talk about the advantages and possible use cases for such proxies.

What are backconnect proxies?

As I mentioned above a backconnect (or rotating) proxy is a special type of proxy. Unlike a regular static residential or datacenter proxy that you can use for scraping or browsing and that features just one IP address, a backconnect proxy can have multiple IPs that become engaged once the proxy is activated. Each such IP is used during a particular session before changing to another one. This can be programmed and the change will be triggered after a certain time limit, or a single IP can remain the same for the length of the whole session and until a new one starts.

In order to visualize the process of operation of a backconnect proxy, I described a range of sessions of such a proxy in the next segment.

How do backconnect proxies work?

The following process is a simplified explanation of how backconnect proxies work in reality.

First, you generate a request on your computer and it goes through your Internet connection (router or modem) to the proxy server, where it gets masked with a proxy IP and rerouted to the target site. This IP is taken from a pool of proxies representing the backconnect proxy (it can be a pool of datacenter or residential proxies).

Second, the target side responds to the request and the requested information is returned to your computer via the same route.

Third, a new request is initiated by your computer and this time the session is completed using another IP from the pool of proxies. And again, the requested information goes back to the proxy user via a new route.

All of these operations including the IP management can be executed in a fraction of time and millions of requests can be processed per day.

When we mention backconnect proxies people also often remember about rotating proxies and reverse backconnect proxies.

With rotating proxies, the situation is rather simple. Basically, it is another name for backconnect proxies.

But with reverse backconnect proxies, we are talking about a totally different type of business related to online security servers. These are used to fight off malicious attacks on sites from the outside. In other words, they are used as firewalls or traffic filters by the websites.

Backconnect proxy use cases

So, what are backconnect proxies used for? The main use case of a backconnect proxy comes from its ability to send millions of requests from a swarm of IPs. When your task is to conduct scraping of a proxy-sensitive search engine like Google or e-stores like Amazon you can easily exceed the rate limit (number of requests allowed from one particular IP) of any of these sites, raising a red flag and ending up with a captcha.

So, with every new connection coming from a new IP you do not have to worry about getting banned and not completing your web scraping mission.

Backconnect proxies will be your first choice in all request-intensive web scraping-related missions (and you can easily use proxies from Germany for German markets while operating from the USA). Companies from the marketing sector use them for tracking ad placements of their customers versus the competition, gaining information on online reviews from marketplaces, gathering sales intelligence, and many more.

All cases where you are likely will get banned on a website for sending consecutive requests from a single IP are perfectly resolved by using backconnect proxies.

Benefits and downsides of backconnect proxies

To get a good picture of backconnect proxies, it will be worth considering the pros and cons of backconnect proxies.

Let’s start with clear advantages that backconnect proxies bring.

Benefits

Time-saving rotations. One of the top backconnect proxies’ benefits is their ability to save you time through their smart and advanced IP rotating mechanism. By automatically applying a new IP for each session, you can have a range of IPs every minute without any manual involvement from your side. All of that results in hours of saved time on your part.

No more rate limits. Another advantage of backconnect proxies that makes them ideal proxies for scraping is overriding the rate limits. A rate limit defines how many times a request from a single IP can be satisfied by a certain site. With a new IP granted each session, you do not have a problem with rate limits while performing our online missions.

Improved anonymity. Using backconnect proxies for web scraping is also justified by the fact that some websites may ban unmasked IPs. With backconnect proxies, you should not worry about this, since they have a higher anonymity level while performing their primary function related to scraping.

Increased security. Backconnect proxies can help you reduce the risk of any malicious software impact on your machine. If your IP is targeted and there is a rotating proxy between you and the target site, the risk of affecting your online privacy will be minimized.

Now let’s consider some of the downsides of using the backconnect proxies.

Downsides

Overall cost. With backconnect proxies, you will get a pool of changing IPs in an automatic mode with an improved rate of security perfect for web scraping. Of course, this kind of convenience comes at an extra cost. Normally, backconnect proxies are priced higher than any other proxies.

Slow speeds. Like with all proxies, the speed of connection can be slowed down due to the physical distances of servers involved in the process. So, if you are trying to scrape a web server not located in your country of residence and your backconnect proxies are yet in the third country, you may expect some issues with lagging in the connections. One of the most obvious cures to solve this problem is to choose a backconnect proxy located closer to the servers of the target website if using residential static proxies without rotating mechanisms is not an option.

Consider PrivateProxy Your Trusted Partner

But regardless of the specifics of your online mission, you can always rely on PrivateProxy to provide you with just the right proxy-related solution. If you are tasked with web scraping of a major search engine or a marketplace, we will carefully consider your request and you will be able to buy a rotating proxy from our selection of high-quality IPs suitable for your mission.

One of the unique models that we use in our practice is the request-based packet counting for our users. No other company in the industry provides such service related to backconnect proxies: you either pay for the traffic or for the number of threads (parallel connections). Our traffic is unlimited for the users by default with an unlimited number of threads (1000 threads per packet but adjustable in some cases; normally it is more than enough). Unlimited traffic and threads make our offer super appealing for our customers. We provide this package of backconnect proxies to web scrapers with intensive online missions.

We also try to keep our site visitors informed on all types of proxies. Being a private proxy provider for longer than a decade, we have enough experience to cater to any proxy-related use cases. So, if you ask yourself something like: “How do residential proxies work?” You will momentarily find an answer here. If a clear answer is yet to be found, you can always approach our highly skilled team of account managers and ask them about proxies directly. They will always have the right answer for you!

Final Thoughts

In this article, we talked about the essence behind the backconnect or rotating proxies. We considered some of the most frequent use cases involving such proxies and discussed the pros and cons of using them.

I hope now you have a better picture in mind on how to use and when you might need some top-quality backconnect proxies. If you still have a question like: What is a private proxy? Please send us your questions through the direct communication link below and our account managers will be more than happy to meet your request.