You may have heard or read that using a proxy slows down your internet connection. However, that’s not always the case. While it is true that proxies can affect your connection speed, if you do due diligence in choosing a solid proxy provider and choose a proxy location accordingly, speed definitely won’t be an issue.
To make things more clear, let’s dive into everything you need to know about proxy latency and how you can measure proxy speed yourself.
What is latency?
In basic terms, latency is the time it takes for you to get a response to your action. For example, when you press a keyboard button on a Word file, the letter or symbol appears on the screen near-instantly. This means the latency is extremely low since it takes so little time for the computer to respond to your action that you can barely notice it.
When it comes to proxies, latency is the time it takes to deliver a data packet from your device to the internet. It’s one of the most important factors for how quickly websites load and how fast they respond to any input.
Low latency leads to a smooth, seamless browsing experience. The higher the latency, the more you’re going to notice long loading times, delayed reactions to any tap of a button, and a generally poor experience no matter what you do online.
Various market research compared the response times for some of the biggest proxy providers in the market. And the findings are quite stunning, with response times ranging from 0.57 seconds in the best cases, all the way down to 5.18 seconds in the worst. This just further proves how important it is to choose a solid proxy provider.
How to measure proxy speed?
Since proxy latency can play such a big role in your user experience, you’ll probably want to test the speed of your proxies before you start using them. While there are several ways to do just that, FOGLDN is the main tool, as it’s designed specifically to test proxy performance.
To use the tool, you simply need to download the FOGDLN app, add the proxies you want to test, enter the URL you want to test them with and press the Test button.
Outside of FOGDLN, pinging your proxy IP address is a method that’s often used to test latency. However, the method has it’s fair share of issues. It doesn’t account for backconnect networks, only measures the latency between the website and the proxy, and relies on ICMP connection protocols for testing.
Ping Proxies, use HTTP and TCP protocols for their connections and they block ICMP to improve proxy anonymity, which means that testing by pinging your IP simply doesn’t work anymore.
What has the most impact on proxy latency?
In some cases, the high latency may not even have anything to do with the quality of the proxy service. However, the latency you end up with is usually a result of several factors, which include the distance from you to the server, the number of nodes in your connection, and network congestion, among others.
Distance from you to the server
This one’s pretty simple — the further your data has to travel before it reaches the server, the longer it takes. If you use a proxy server on the other side of the world, you’ll have high latency even with the best proxies.
For the best performance, choose a proxy server that is as close to you as possible. Sure, in some cases, you have to connect to a distant server to complete your task but don’t be surprised if the connection feels slower than usual when you do so.
Number of nodes in the connection
Just as it takes more time for data to travel long distances, latency also increases depending on how many nodes data has to pass through before it reaches the website you’re trying to visit.
Proxies with static IP addresses, such as datacenter proxies and ISP proxies, use a simple connection. Data travels from your device to the proxy server and from the proxy server straight to the internet, adding a single node to your regular connection.
However, residential proxies with rotating IPs need to use backconnect proxies in order to change your IP with each request or connection. Such connections send your data through both backconnect proxies and residential proxies before it reaches the target website. Therefore, residential proxy connections are typically a little slower.
Network congestion
The more people use the same network, the more likely it is to get congested. A large number of users puts a lot of load on the servers, and as a result, they don’t perform as well as they should.
This is usually a big problem with free proxies or providers with small networks in general. When choosing your proxy provider, make sure to look for one with a large proxy network and quality servers.
Server response times
The quality of the server matters just as much as the load it receives. High-speed proxy servers that are hosted in powerful datacenters typically have a faster response time and have pretty much the same results every time.
Residential proxy networks are formed by devices in actual residential areas, usually owned by regular internet users just like yourself. While quality proxy services do filter and select residential proxy servers carefully, they’re still not as technically capable as datacenter servers.
So while residential proxies tend to have the best IP quality, they can suffer slightly when it comes to performance and response times.
The path your connection takes
Even with the same distance between you and the server and the same number of nodes in your connection, the path your data takes to reach internet may be different. This can get a little confusing, but stick with us.
The internet is a wide network of interconnected local networks. The relationships between these networks allow traffic to flow seamlessly between them. But maintaining large networks costs a lot of money, and only big-name carriers can afford it.
Smaller carriers may need to send your data through multiple other carriers before it reaches its final destination. As a result, your connection takes longer. Larger carriers with bigger networks can send data directly to the carrier that hosts the recipient website’s servers, making the connection shorter and therefore, faster.
Ping Proxies only works with large carriers such as AT&T, Spectrum, Comcast, and Windstream to ensure an optimal connection. However, not all proxy providers do so. To check the connection path, you can track it via a traceroute and see exactly how long it takes for your data to travel to the final destination.
Your own connection speed
Users are sometimes quick to blame proxies for a slow internet connection. But sometimes proxies have very little to do with it. Before you go about blaming your proxy provider, check if there aren’t any issues with your own connection.
Doing so is simple. Perform a speed test without connecting to the proxy, then connect to the proxy and run a speed test again. If the results aren’t far apart, chances are, the proxy has nothing to do with the slow connection and you should contact your ISP to resolve the issue first.
Conclusion
If you want to ensure the lowest possible latency and the best connection in general when using proxies, you have to go with a quality, premium proxy provider. They’re the ones with the largest networks and the best servers, which helps you avoid issues such as network congestion and slow response times.
Other than that, make sure you’re connecting to a proxy server not too far away from your physical location and you should have no issues while connected to a proxy.
