The journal

Node4 Blog

Proxy engineering you can reproduce: working integration code, error messages traced back to their cause, and benchmarks written so you can run them against us.

Where to start

Six paths through the archive, each opening with the post that answers the question most completely.

Choose a proxy type and a budget

Work out what the job needs before buying anything, and what each pricing shape costs you at that volume.

Datacenter vs residential proxies: which one do you need

The trade the whole decision turns on: datacenter IPs are faster and cheaper, residential IPs look like people.

Write the integration

Copy a working configuration for the language, framework or browser driver you are already using.

Python requests proxy setup, end to end

The library behind most scraping code, including the session and retry behavior that decides whether it holds up.

Control rotation and sessions

Keep an identity for as long as a flow needs one, and drop it the moment it stops helping.

Rotating proxies with curl and Python, plus session rules

Where rotation belongs in a request loop, and the session rules that stop it breaking multi step flows.

Authenticate and govern egress

Decide who may use the proxy, from which machines, and how that is proven and recorded.

Proxy authentication methods for teams and infrastructure

The methods compared for a team rather than a laptop, including what each one costs to rotate.

Run it in production

Measure what the proxy layer is doing, read the failures it reports, and stay on the right side of the line.

Proxy error codes: who sent it and who fixes it

407, 403, 429 and 502 sorted by origin, so you stop debugging the wrong side of the connection.

Put proxies to work

What the finished thing looks like in three jobs proxies are bought for.

Price monitoring that returns prices you can trust

Why an unproxied price check quietly returns the wrong number, and the setup that fixes it.

Setting something up right now? The help center carries the step by step guides.