Proxies are becoming a crucial tool for individuals and businesses alike. You can use these tools to protect your online security while also improving your browsing experience. The benefits for companies go even further as they help with tasks such as web scraping, marketing, and automation. If you use unreliable proxies, you may have a bad browsing experience, security risks, slow speeds, and unreliable connections. That’s why it’s essential to test the performance of your proxies.
In this article, we look at how to test your proxies. We’ll also look at which metrics you should evaluate when testing the performance of your proxy server. Make sure you start strong by only choosing proxies from reliable providers like Smartproxy and then test your chosen ones to see if they can deliver.
Table of Contents
What Metrics Should You Evaluate?
Before you start testing your proxy, you need to understand the metrics you need to look at. When it comes to testing a proxy server, there are three main metrics to test – location, speed, and uptime.
Location
First, the location where your chosen proxy server is located will directly affect its performance. The further away you are from the physical server, the longer distance the data travels between your system and the server. Try to choose a server closest to you to ensure you have a fast connection.
That being said, in some instances, you might need to bypass geo-restrictions and access content in another country. This is possible with a proxy, but you’ll have to select a server within that country in order to bypass the restrictions. In this case, the server will most likely be further away but try to still choose the one that’s closest to you.
Speed
The speed of your proxy has a direct impact on your overall connection. If the proxy server runs slowly, it can affect your browsing speed. This can range from being an annoyance to being a severe issue for businesses that rely on fast speeds and up-to-date scraping to deliver real-time services, such as high-frequency trading.
Reliability/Uptime
Uptime is the term used to describe how long the server has been running without any interruptions. It’s a direct reflection of how reliable the server is. A proxy that doesn’t run consistently and has a high percentage of downtime can directly impact online activities.
Tools Needed To Test Your Proxies?
Now that we understand what we need to look at when testing proxies, we can start to look at using different tools to see how they perform.
IP Checkers
There are numerous IP checkers available online that you can use to test the performance of your proxies. Some examples of IP checkers you can use for free are IPLocation and whatismyproxy.com.
- Open your chosen IP checker
- The checker will evaluate your current IP
- You’ll receive information such as the location of your IP, browser info, and HTTP headers
IP checkers are best used to determine the location of your IP, while some of the more advanced checkers are able to also provide other useful metrics.
IP Databases
IP databases are extensive collections of IP addresses and their associated information. Businesses use these databases for a variety of reasons. The primary use is to check whether the traffic to your website is from real or proxy users. However, these databases can also show whether your IP identifies as a residential or datacenter proxy. You can use databases such as IP2Location and MaxMind to see what type of proxy yours identifies as and how websites will perceive it.
- Open your chosen IP database.
- The database will run your current IP address.
- You’ll receive information such as the proxy type, security threat level when the proxy was last seen, net speed, and more.
IP databases are best used when you want to see what type of proxy your IP identifies as. However, depending on the database you use, they can also provide other vital metrics, such as the location and reliability of the proxy.
FOGLDN Proxy Tester
FOGLDN is a great tool to evaluate the speed of your proxy, and it also shows you the proxy type, location, and a couple of other parameters. It’s a desktop app that can be downloaded and installed for free to test your proxies. It tests the speed of your proxy by pinging the server and recording the response time.
- Download, install, and run FOGLDN.
- Add the proxies that you want to test. This tool also works for testing rotating proxies.
- Enter a URL to test, and make sure it’s in your chosen location if you need to bypass geo-restrictions with this proxy.
- Click on ‘Test Proxies.’
FOGLDN is best used to test the speed of your proxy, but it can also provide other useful information, such as the proxy type, location, and more.
Hidemy.Name
Hidemy.Name is a great tool to test your proxies, especially if you need to scale these efforts and evaluate hundreds at once. This service aggregates data from numerous public and private IP databases. The tool can show valuable information such as proxy location, type, anonymity level, reliability and more.
- Open Hidemy.Name.
- Add your proxy list.
- Select the type of information you want to see.
- Click on ‘Start Checking’ to get your results.
Hidemy.Name is best used to check the overall performance of your proxy server. It’s handy when you need to scale your evaluation efforts and review hundreds of proxies simultaneously.
Final Thoughts
Testing the performance of your proxies is crucial to ensure that they work the way you need them to. When evaluating their performance, location, speed, and reliability are the main metrics you want to consider. Numerous tools are available, such as IP checkers and databases, that you can use to test the performance of your proxy server.