What are ISP proxies and why do bot operators love them?

An IP address either comes from a residential proxy or a data center proxy. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) own and manage the IPs of residential proxies, while data centers own and manage the IPs of data center proxies. But there’s another type of proxy that ties the benefits of residential and data center proxies together into something that bot operators have come to love: ISP proxies.

What are ISP proxies?

ISP proxies are similar to residential proxies because they use IP addresses that are associated with ISPs. However, ISP proxies run on data center servers. So they provide the speed, uptime, and anonymity of data center proxies, with the high-quality IPs of residential proxies that can easily circumvent IP-based security solutions.

What are static residential proxies?

Static residential proxies are what ISP proxies were called before they became popular. They were called static because they were hosted on optimized servers and so didn’t have to rotate IPs as much as regular residential proxies tied to a home network do.

What are ISP proxies used for?

ISP proxies can be used for any large-scale online operation where someone wants to stay under the radar. Because ISP proxies are hosted on dedicated servers, they are fast. Ideal for web scraper bots, scalper bots, or low-and-slow network layer attacks. They are also used for social media monitoring, SEO monitoring, or anything that requires managing multiple online accounts.

Want to learn more about protecting your business from security risks? Read our guides to stopping bad bot IP addresses and preventing scalper bots from interfering with your business.

How to protect your business from ISP proxies?

The downside of ISP proxies is that they are more expensive than both residential and data center proxies. However, those costs are only ever going down. It’s likely that a growing number of bot traffic coming to your websites, mobile apps, and APIs, are from ISP proxies. Because they use high-quality residential IPs, you cannot rely exclusively on IP-based security solutions to stop these threats (one of the reasons why WAFs fall short).

Instead, you need to rely on a fraud management solution that takes into account much more than the quality of a request’s IP address. A solution that looks at fingerprints, HTTP headers, browsing behavior, device versions, user agents, and much more. 

That’s what we’ve built at DataDome. Our online fraud management solution protects your websites, mobile apps, and APIs from all forms of bad bots, blocking them within milliseconds of their arrival. Requests from ISP proxies stand no chance against DataDome’s state-of-the-art bot detection algorithms and SOC experts.

If you want to know how many bots are currently already browsing your website, start your free trial today. It only takes a few minutes to set up, and you don’t need a credit card. Otherwise, you can always contact us to request a demo of our software.