Businesses running scraping operations may miss crucial data points if their proxies don’t work correctly. Testing proxies is also essential in fields like marketing, automation, cybersecurity, etc. But how do you do that?
Many businesses use their own scripts to test proxies. But if you are an individual with almost no technical knowledge, you can still test proxies in different ways. Using an online proxy checker is one of the easiest ways.
And Proxyway offers a free online proxy checker to test whether your proxies are working correctly. In this article, we will elaborate on how to test proxies and what factors you need to consider while testing proxies. Let’s get started.
How to Test Proxies Using a Proxy Checker?
Testing proxies manually can be a tedious and technical task for many. Fortunately, a lot of tools are available online to test proxies. Here is a quick overview of how you can check whether the proxy server is working fine.
Online IP Checker
Online IP checkers are the easiest way to check whether your proxy is working. You just need to enter the proxy and click the Check button to get the result. Proxy checkers fetch information from online IP databases and show you the metrics of different parameters.
For example, Proxyway’s proxy checker can take multiple inputs at the same time and show advanced results. It will show proxy status indicating whether the tool was able to set up a connection via the proxy you entered.
The speed column shows the latency or the time required for the server to respond. And you will get to know proxy locations, ISP information, hosting information, proxy type, etc., from the results.
But not all proxy checkers online might show advanced results. They will usually reveal the IP address and location.
IP Databases
IP databases have IP addresses and other information associated with those addresses. So, you can use these databases to check whether a proxy is working properly. The IP status or usage type is also checked in this process to figure out whether the IP address is residential or connected to a data center.
For example, you may enter a proxy address, and the database recognizes it as a data center IP. In that case, the websites you are targeting for web scraping or other operations might also recognize the same thing and block that address.
FOGLDN Proxy Tester
It is a desktop app for testing proxy speed. You can test a variety of proxies using this proxy tester and get precise latency information about your proxies. It supports multiple authorization methods, but you might not be able to check proxy location, type, or other advanced parameters.
How to Build Your Own Proxy Tester?
If you aren’t satisfied with the results of proxy checkers online, you can build your own proxy tester. But it requires vast technical knowledge, especially in writing scripts that will test proxies. You can write scripts in many languages, but Python is commonly used to write scripts for proxy checkers.
You will find codes for a proxy tester online. Using those codes will save you a lot of time. But if you want to build it from scratch, you might need to work with multiple libraries and functions.
What to Consider While Testing Proxies?
You need to check multiple factors while testing proxies. But here are the three most important factors you must check during proxy testing.
Location
Checking the physical location of the proxy server is crucial to enjoying a smooth browsing experience. And it is also important to know whether the content you are trying to access is restricted in the location of the proxy server. In such cases, there will be no point in using those proxies.
And when the proxy server location is far away, transferring data from and to servers becomes very difficult. It might take a lot longer than usual to send and receive data. So, you will experience a slower internet connection.
Connection Speed
When you are using proxies for large-scale operations, the server speed should be good enough to perform your tasks. If the server speed is slow, it can severely affect sensitive operations. Even if you use proxies at home to access restricted content, slow servers will be an obstacle to accessing heavier pages.
Proxy Uptime
It refers to how long the server can operate without any interruptions. The higher the uptime, the higher the chance of connecting to your target server. So, checking the stability of the connection is utterly important while testing proxies.
Conclusion
While there are endless tools on the internet to test proxies, the free proxy checker from Proxyway stands out from the crowd. The interface is easy to use, and you can test multiple proxies at a time. And the tool shows accurate data on multiple parameters to give you a complete idea of the proxy server.
