Rotating IP addresses explained by Astro

As long as you are interested in the services provided by our trusted proxy website Astro, you must have heard something about “rotating IPs”. However, our practice indicates that many people do not fully grasp what it means. Today, we have decided to close this gap and also offer our rotating proxies free trial to new users. 

Proxy rotation

Proxy rotation is a procedure that assigns a fresh proxy to a new query sent to a site on the Internet. Thus, a rotating proxy can be referred to as an IP address that is replaced with another one whenever needed. The need for such a process is self-evident. 

Too many requests associated with the same IP address raise suspicion. Website owners and admins almost universally view these situations as threatening and act accordingly by red flagging and blocking such IPs. The problem, however, is that multiple requests are inevitable if one wants to resolve a complex task on the Net. In addition to that, sometimes IPs need to rotate not only for data harvesting, but for maintaining IT infrastructures and access control. Here are some examples: 

• SEO agencies make use of proxies to scan keywords of interest across various geographical zones;
• Business Intelligence entities, by definition, harvest enormous volumes of data for analytical efforts; 
• Data triangulation departments need to validate their info on the basis of multiple sources;
• Any IT company using outgoing bots needs to manage load on its network, control access to it, and monitor traffic.

IP address rotation techniques 

The key takeaway about IP rotation is that this process is constant. It is practiced not only by trusted proxy websites, but also by regular Internet Service Providers. Your own IP might пуе rotated very soon, and you even do not notice this.  

Once again, IP rotation occurs when new IP addresses are distributed among devices either in accordance with a schedule, or at random. Whenever you get connected to the Web with your ISP, your machine automatically gets an IP address contained in the ISP’s pool of addresses. After you get reconnected, these addresses get redistributed, and you get a new one. ISPs may apply the following frameworks for IP rotation:

1. Pre-configured rotation means that special intervals are set in advance. Whenever a certain period expires, a new address is given;
2. Discrete rotation technique makes it possible for a user to deliberately select an address for a new web surfing session; 
3. Random rotation framework presupposes that a randomly chosen IP is provided for every new outbound Internet connection. So it is out of the user’s control what IP they get;
4. Burst rotation is practiced by ISPs to give a device a new IP after a certain amount of connections, say, 5 or 10.

Rotating addresses in practice 

Manual approach

It is not that difficult to rotate proxies on your own. For example, people are able, manually, to tune their proxy settings in the Chrome browser. There are also proxy managers in existence. One can use them to get assistance. Being a trusted proxy website, Astro makes it extremely simple to hand-pick IPs and manage them via our dashboard. You won’t need anything else. 

Code-based approach 

Tech-savvy users can also enable proxy rotation programmatically, i.e. by applying the potential of existing libraries. For instance, Python, as a simple to master language, offers a variety of tools for that. Python Requests library is one of them.

Built-in rotators 

Working with a trusted proxy website, such as Astro, is an optimal shortcut. One does not need to immerse themselves into browser settings or code deeply. Just define how you want your rotation to occur, and our advanced ecosystem will take care of that. See it for yourself by ordering our rotating proxies free trial available for new users.