Business people these days prefer proxies to enhance their performance and ensure a highly secured environment to prevent their data from cyber-attacks. Proxy servers act on behalf of the client-side and communicate with the server. This ensures anonymity by hiding the actual IP address of the client with the proxy address. This anonymity feature supports the client in scraping data from various sources without any geographical restrictions.
Proxy connection errors are the most common proxy server errors. When you come across an error message like, “cannot connect to the proxy server,” it may be because of a poor Internet connection, misconfiguration of the proxy, or windows issues.
Proxy connection failure may occur due to multiple reasons, like network connectivity. Some standard solutions can fix proxy errors.
The proxy errors are categorized into 5 classes according to the nature of the issues. The first digit of the error denotes to which category it belongs.
| Error Code | Class | Reason |
| 1xx | Informational | The server received the request and is processing them currently. |
| 2xx | Successful | The server accepted the requests. |
| 3xx | Redirection | The user should take further actions to complete the requests. |
| 4xx | Client Error | Unable to execute as the requests have errors. |
| 5xx | Server Error | Server came across an unexpected condition. |
The codes of the Informational class (1xx) denote that the requests are currently in process. The response code “100” means that the server received a part of the request and notifies the client to send the remaining message. The client sends the request header “Expect 100 continue” to the server. This means that the client is expecting a “continue” response from the server. Only if the server responds with 100, will the client proceed to send the body.
In some cases, the client’s web browser will request the server to switch to other communication protocols like HTTP, HTTPS, or socks. Receiving the “101” status code means that the server acknowledged the protocol switch.
When a client sends a complex request with many sub requests, the server may take some time to complete the process. During this process time, the client may face a time-out error. To avoid this, the server notifies the client with a “102” status code to say the request is received and under processing.
This response code is an indication to the client that the server is about to send the final response. This response code comes with header fields that allow users to load the resources while the server is processing the response.
This simply means the server successfully processed the client’s request.
This status code says that the server successfully processed the request and created a new resource based on the request. For example: When a user enters their login details, the server processes the details and allows the user to access their account, and further creates a response based on the primary one.
This code is the indication that the server received and accepted the request. This means the server is yet to start the execution and will display the response once processing is done.
The error codes of the 3xx class signify the redirection errors. The status code 300 says that the requested URL is pointing to multiple URLs. When a client requests an URL, the web browser gets confused if it points to more than one URL.
To resolve this issue, the users have to check the HTTP header and make sure the URL points to a unique source. So that the web browser will easily retrieve the page.
When the content of the page is permanently moved to the new URL, the browsers will redirect to the new URL. The browser can handle up to 5 redirections. This proxy error is not an issue, as it automatically redirects to the new URL, making it easy for the scrapers to access the new page.
If it goes beyond 5 redirects, it can result in an infinite loop. This reports a “301 error message,” which means the browser is unable to find the original active URL.
This error suggests that the users access the requested resource with proxies. When the scrapers connect to proxy servers, they can use proxies to increase anonymity and accessibility. The Chrome browser displays the proxy address to make use of while some browsers will not display the address concerning the security issues.
Connecting to the suggested proxy server can resolve the issue and allow the user to access the requested site.
This is quite similar to the 305 error message. The only difference, in this case, is that the HTTP client is already using a proxy and the server is suggesting using another proxy for better access.
Connecting with another proxy server can resolve this issue.
This HTTP status code says that you will temporarily use the new URL to access the resource, but the upcoming requests will use the original URL.
Simply redirecting to the new URL will work.
Among the client error codes, this is one of the most common ones. This 400 error indicates that the server is unable to process the request for some reason. The reason may be anything, like missing out on any fields in the requests, invalid format, improper syntax, or deceptive request routing.
Check if the requests have all the required information in a proper format, then resend the request.
If you came across this error code, know that you are trying to access a page that requires authentication. Simply providing authorization information can help you remove the blocks.
Using a proxy server will bypass restricted sites for your access, but scraping such pages may be considered illegal.
This is the most common status code. Though your request is received and valid, the server will not let you access the information for some reason. The reason may be anything, so it may be hard to figure out. All you can understand is you are trying to access something you do not have permission to.
You can check the login credentials once again to ensure you are the right user. This may work to an extent if the issue is with the wrong credentials.
This is another common error code people face. This code means that the page is no longer available. This error occurs when the page is deleted or moved to another URL without redirecting the page to the new URL.
Make sure the URL is valid and send the request once again.
The proxy server may throw an authentication error for various reasons. If the scraper tool is not properly authenticated with the proxy or uses invalid proxy authentication credentials, this error may occur.
To resolve this error,
This 408 says that the client did not make any requests while the server is waiting to receive and process the request. This might happen because of a slow internet connection or an overload on the server.
Checking the internet connection and sending the request again may help to resolve time-out issues.
The 429 error code occurs when the client sends multiple requests from the same IP address. In this case, the server may consider them bot-generated requests and block them from reaching the server.
In some cases, the reverse proxy may use this 429 error code to restrict the overload in the server. For example, some web server decides the limits, terms, and conditions with the proxy providers to prevent abnormal traffic in the server.
Using multiple proxy addresses with rotating proxies can help the users to send multiple requests with unique IP addresses.
These 5xx codes determine the proxy server error, where the server is not able to process the request after receiving them from the clients. The server reports this error message when no other error code matches. This occurs when the server faces an unexpected situation and fails to handle the requests.
If the request has an unsupported method, the web server responds with a “501” error code. These methods stop the server from providing access to the requested resources as they can not recognize the source URL.
This is another common one among the proxy error codes. This error may occur when the server we are connecting to acts as a gateway or proxy to another server. If the proxy server receives an invalid response from that other server, it will result in a bad gateway error.
Disabling the proxies can send direct requests to the server can resolve this error. In some cases, just clearing the cache memory should also resolve the error.
If the server you are trying to reach is out of service, then you may get a service unavailable error. When the server gets loaded with too many requests or the server is under maintenance the server becomes unavailable to process the requests.
Use different IP addresses from rotating IP pools to avail of the services.
When the client’s request through proxy fails, the web server or the browsers displays the error code. The error code explains the nature and cause of the errors.
The error codes are categorized into three types according to the nature of the errors. The codes with the same number in the start fall under the same category. For example, The error codes that start with “4” denotes client errors.
The HTTP proxy errors are more similar to the HTTP error status. The only difference is that HTTP proxy errors are the response from the server when the client passes the requests through proxies.
People generally use proxies for experiencing a better scraping experience. With proxies, you can easily overcome the restrictions and scrape without limits. When your requests through proxies fail, the browser will alert you with a proper error response to help you understand the type and source of the error. To resolve the issue, first, understand the nature of the error and try out the suitable solutions and fix them. The geo-location proxies of various communication protocols from Proxyscrape can help users to access sites across the globe without restrictions.
