Proxy chaining process accelerates the power with multiple levels of proxies chained together. As the Internet serves people in a wide range of applications, proxy chaining can help people with increased security features. From the simple surfing process to handling confidential transactions, people tend to make use of every available feature of the network. With the ultimate capacity of the Internet, people are performing high-level operations, like data aggregation and scraping.
A proxy is a solution that can hide a client’s IP address to appear in the network with their proxy IP to ensure the anonymity of the client. A proxy is an intermediate server between two communication nodes of the network. This intermediate device works on behalf of one of the client nodes and hides its original IP address from the network. They forward the request of this client node to the server node of the communication network. So that the client’s identity or IP address is not known to the servers.
A proxy does not only work on behalf of clients, they also work on the server-side in some cases. Proxies are directly connected to servers and can stop clients from directly reaching the server. They receive the request from the client’s IP address and respond to them on behalf of the server. This minimizes the crowd on the server-side. Proxies cache the data from the server and make use of these cached pages to reply to the upcoming client requests. These cached versions can reduce the response time.
Proxy chaining is an enhanced proxy technique that also strives to improve the security of the users. Proxy chaining is the method of chaining multiple proxies back to back to ensure high security. Proxy users believe that hackers or Internet Service Providers will find it hard to track the original IP address of clients with one proxy server. But, what if we use various proxy servers? Won’t it increase the security measures tenfold?
Yes, proxy users create a proxy chain and configure multiple proxies between the client and the destination server. Thus, the websites have to cross these multiple stages to track the client’s IP address. Proxy chaining is a quick and easy way to aggregate data from multiple sources as this multi-level security system can withstand hacking and helps users stay anonymous.
The one major benefit of using a proxy is to overcome IP bans. Extracting data from multiple sources with one IP address can result in IP bans. The Internet Service Providers or websites can easily track an IP address in the system if you are not using a proxy. As proxies promote anonymity and allow accessing geo-blocked sites, proxy chaining does the same, only more effectively.
As proxies in the proxy chain forward traffic from the client to a proxy server, then from that proxy server to another proxy server, it makes it hard for the websites to track the user and ban them from their site. This internal network with multiple proxy levels also helps to store cached pages from different websites. These cached versions are like a photocopy of the data in the destination server. Using this speeds up the processing time and responds to the user in a short while.
Proxy chaining is an internal network with a number of proxies connected in a chain. Users can use the existing proxy servers of the system and configure them into a chain, one after another. Let us consider, that a user connects nearly 3 to 5 proxies in a chain. Let’s name them Proxy1, proxy2, and proxy3. Now, we have a client, server, and three proxies in between, as shown in the figure below.
Configuring proxy servers in a proxy chain is similar to adding proxies to the system. Here are the steps to demonstrate the manual process of adding more than one proxy to a chain.
Tor is a web browser that promotes anonymous browsing. These web browsers can mask the web traffic from the network, which can make it hard to find the identity of the user. This encrypts the data packets of the user requests, which can make it hard for the network to track the message. This browser does not ensure 100% security, but it still keeps the user’s IP address under wraps. TOR website also allows proxy chaining, which supports anonymous web browsing.
Users can configure a proxy chain with as many proxies as they need. But 5 to 6 proxies are preferable because this protects the system from time-lapse issues and can increase the security of the communication.
Load Balancers – Use more than one proxy to forward traffic and split them among proxy servers.
Rotating Proxies – Works with a pool of IP addresses as they automatically shift to the next IP address after a particular period.
Proxy Switchers – Uses more than one proxy and switches among them per the requirement of the process.
Chaining proxies can increase security for sure, but users can not rely on this completely. There may be cases when one proxy server fails, and the system may lack in efficiency, taking more time to complete the process.
Yes, proxy chaining is an example of proxying a proxy. A proxy that is working on behalf of another node can also have a proxy work on their behalf. This process is known as ‘proxy a proxy’.
Yes, when the proxy chains work for the server-side to protect their identity, it is a reverse proxy chain.
We learned how chaining multiple proxies can benefit users by improving security features. If you want to experience a quality proxy service with multiple proxies in a chain, get the suitable proxies from ProxyScrape, which can provide proxies of all categories and types. If you want to stay anonymous while browsing data in the network, use the TOR web browser that can ensure anonymous browsing. This method is not suitable for high-level applications, like scrapping. To hide the physical IP address of your system, use proxy chaining in the windows method. Proxy chaining is applicable for other Operating Systems, like macOS, as well.