Now that you are a happy owner of a set of proxies for your online mission, you want to be sure that the proxies you bought will be just what you were promised in the first place.
What if the speed of your recently acquired proxy is compromised and so is its performance. Of course, you don’t want to end up with proxies leaking your real IP and causing red-flags on the websites you are accessing.
You can avoid all these risks by having the right parameters of your private proxies tested before you put them into the real operation.
But how do you go about testing the performance and other qualities of your proxies? This is exactly the question we want to answer in this article.
How do we start testing proxies?
It is a common industrial rule to begin testing the three major parameters of proxies: speed, location and uptime.
Testing proxy speed
Now, why is speed such an important factor of proxy performance? Clearly, because scraping large volumes of data can be time consuming with slow proxies. Also, with missions related to buying sneakers online you cannot rely on a slow proxy to bring you the goods. To learn more on how to use proxies for sneakers, enjoy this complete guide that we have put together in this subject.
Another thing related to speed is the proxy status. If a proxy is slow, then it is likely a shared or open proxy without exclusivity to its IP reserved by a single user. So, testing proxies for speed can also reveal this situation. It will let you avoid using shared IPs where you will need private proxies with much higher speed.
So, how to test proxy speed if it is so crucial? We recommend using this online service to test the proxy speed for your operations.
Testing proxy location
A proxy’s location can be a critical factor if you buy datacenter proxies or residential IPs for accessing geo-restricted websites. You will not be able to access sites with limited access to New York IPs with European proxies and the other way around.
One easy and convenient method of how to check proxies’ address location would be through checking your IP. For this you can use https://whatismyipaddress.com/
This tester will also reveal the geographical location of the corresponding IP. It will not detect if you are using a proxy or not, though.
To be able to get a better picture at your proxy parameters you can use another tester – http://www.whatismyproxy.com/ – it will reveal your IP, proxy status, your current location and the HTTP header of the user agent that you are using.
This is considered to be a rather simple test. It gives you an idea on how to test a reverse proxy or a regular proxy by first setting it up in the browser and then going to the testing website. To get the information on your proxy, all you need is to refresh the browser. Now, if your browser returns an error code related to the proxy, you can find out the description of errors in this article on proxy error meaning.
Testing proxy uptime
The biggest problem with most shared and free-to-use-proxies is that they go down easily. You can start operating it successfully but after a short time into the mission you end up with a ban or a red flag.
For complex tasks such as web scraping you need private proxies with a considerable uptime. This is the period of time while your proxy remains operational without causing you to replace it with a new one.
Now, the proxy providers tend to claim 99.9% of uptime on all of their proxies but still you can check the quality of proxies by using a TCP monitor. This way to test a proxy will be able to demonstrate the advertised uptime.
Best Ways and Tools for Testing Proxies
Besides testing proxies for their general performance parameters, there are specialized tools out there that can give you an overall picture about the quality of proxies that you are about to use.
FOGLDN Proxy Tester
FOGLDN is one of such universal tools for checking proxies. It is very popular among proxy users and can be used specifically to verify if your proxy will be good-to-go with a particular URL. On its main screen FOGLDN also demonstrates the ping to a certain site, making it ideal for testing proxies for sneaker sites where time to connect is critical.
As for the downsides of the tool, it does not show you the reasons a proxy text fails. It also does not clearly show the location and type of proxy. And, in terms of functionality, you cannot set the number of connection requests you need or the intervals between the requests.
From the setup perspective, the test is very easy to deploy. All you need is to download the application and add your proxies to the list. The software supports both static and rotating proxies. Then you need to choose the destination URL and hit the button “TEST PROXIES”. To learn how to get a rotating proxy free trial from us, reach out to our account manager via the chat box below.
Testing Proxies with IP Database
You can use an IP database for testing your proxies. Just like when you used your individual IP checker, you can process your proxy IPs through an IP database that will show you a range of parameters relevant to the qualities of your proxies. Most of such databases are expensive, some you can find that will let you check upto 50 IPs per day for free (or more with registration). We recommend using IP2Location Database for testing proxies.
Now, what does the Database check your proxies for:
- It gives you the Proxy IP and location.
- Identifies proxy type (datacenter, residential or mobile). This is an important parameter. Because in some cases you can purchase residential proxies that will appear to the system as datacenter proxies. This test can reveal it before you start burning your IPs. Now, if you care to learn more about the difference between residential proxy vs datacenter, please follow this link.
- Anonymity. The test shows how well the proxy hides your original IP.
- ISP or local mobile carrier. Shows what service provider issued the IPs.
- Conducts a “proxy test”. Basically the system tells you if your IP is identified as a proxy or not. It can be OK if you have a datacenter proxy but can be a problem in case of residential static proxies.
Among limitations that such a proxy test demonstrate we can certainly name a few:
- The Database test does not show you if a proxy going to work with a particular website you need;
- It does not test proxies for speed;
- And it is rather expensive if you need a large number of proxies tested.
To perform the Database test, first you need to set up a proxy in your browser and go to the Database website. It will identify your current IP automatically. If you are testing backconnect proxies, just refresh the site.
Nmap
Nmap is a free-to-use mapping tool that you can easily use for testing proxies. To run tests on Nmap you will just need to feed proxy IPs and some other information into the tool.
This proxy tester is extremely flexible and advanced. It is based on a highly sophisticated network mapping technique. It is also quite powerful, so it can handle rather large proxy networks for mapping. Plus it is easy to use and configure.
As far as compatibility is concerned Nmap supports all of the major operating systems out there, including Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, IRIX, and more.
Angry IP Scanner
Angry IP Scanner is an extremely popular network scanner that was downloaded by users millions of times. One of the best features about this app is that after scanning your proxy IPs you can export the result in multiple formats depending on your needs.
Normally, this tester is used for identifying the proxy uptime, hosts, ports, etc. The scanner is easy to use, thanks to its command line interface. Also, Angry IP is an open-source software tool, which means it can be easily downloaded and installed virtual in any popular OS. It supports Windows, Mac OS and Linux computers.
Another popular tool used to control proxies from the command line is cURL. Enjoy this article to learn how to use cURL command with a proxy.
Proxy Verifier
Proxy Verifier is a special tool that is used to test HTTPS proxies. It was developed by Yahoo Developer’s network to improve the reliability of proxies and made open source.
Proxy Verifier is a bi-directtional tool. It simulates a client and targeted websites to see how proxy will perform in a given situation. You can set and test various criteria of your proxies using this tool.
The dashboard interface of the tester makes it easy to use. You can set up and run several tests of the same configuration or make alterations from run to run.
Hide My Name
This tester is considered to be one of the best proxy checkers for testing multiple proxies at once. All you need to do is to feed a list of proxies into the checker and it will check them at 64 threads.
This tool will be able to test private proxies’ ping, connection speed, level of anonymity and other parameters. You will be able to export the test results into a required format as well.
Hide My Name is capable of testing both HTTP and SOCKS proxies. It is free to use but it has a paid premium version with a range of other useful features.
InfobyIP
This is a universal checker with a built-in Proxy Tester. It can check for proxy servers’ anonymity and availability. It can test SOCKS5 proxies as well as HTTP proxies.
It is very easy to use for being a web-based tool. You can just plug in your proxy details in IP:Port format to run a test. It is free to use and is available in multiple languages.
Consider PrivateProxy Your Trusted Partner
As a proxy provider with over a decade of experience in servicing our clients, it is absolutely essential to us to share tools and techniques that are relevant to checking the speed and performance of proxies that we supply.
The tools that we have described above are all used by our account managers and tech support specialists to make sure that the proxies that we provide to you meet your expectations while used in your online missions.
While some of the tools above may be more popular than others, it is up to you to decide how to test if a proxy is working and what parameters may be crucial in your particular case. So, enjoy this rather comprehensive list and the performance of our top-notch proxies.
Final Thoughts
We hope that this article covered most of the easy-to-use and available tools out there to help you test and verify the performance of your proxies. You can choose from standalone downloadable tools to online apps that serve the function of checking the ping, uptime, speed and other parameters of proxies that you just bought from your proxy provider. Please enjoy the list and share it with your colleagues if you find it useful.
Frequently Asked Questions
Please read our Documentation if you have questions that are not listed below.
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How and where can I test my proxies?
There are a number of ways and tools that can help you test your proxies. The online browser-based tools that you can easily use to test proxies in a browser include: https://proxy-checker.net/en/speed-test - this is a great checker for testing the proxy speed; http://www.whatismyproxy.com/ - with this tool you can check you proxy’s IP, location and proxy status; https://support.smartbear.com/alertsite/docs/monitors/network/tcp/create.html - with TCP tool you can verify the proxy uptime. Also, you can download the following tools and run thorough tests of your proxies using: Nmap, Angry IP Scanner, Hide My Name, Proxy Verifier and others.
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How to test a proxy server connection speed?
Speed is a critical proxy parameter. To test proxy connection use this proxy speed checker: https://proxy-checker.net/en/speed-test/. It is browser based and is easy to use even for an inexperienced proxy user. You can always test proxy connection to Google once you have your proxy setup in your system.
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How do I know if my HTTP proxy is working?
The easiest way would be to open http://www.whatismyproxy.com/ and place your HTTP proxy into the URL field for proxies. This checker will reveal your proxy IP, proxy status, the current location and the HTTP header of the user agent that you are using.
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How do I test my proxy uptime?
In order to test the uptime of a proxy use TCP checker: https://support.smartbear.com/alertsite/docs/monitors/network/tcp/create.html. This test will show if your proxy is a legitimate private proxy and not a shared one with a risk of limited uptime on mission-critical projects.
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