Guides, Tutorials & Insights
Learn about residential proxies, web scraping, data collection strategies, and industry best practices from the Shifter team.
Shared vs Dedicated Residential Proxies: What's the Difference?
Dedicated means the address is yours alone, which changes who owns its reputation. Here is when that is worth paying for and when a shared pool is better.
Matt Brown · August 30, 2026 What Is a Peer-to-Peer Residential Proxy Network?
Instead of servers in a datacenter, the network is made of ordinary people's devices. Here is how that works, what you get from it, and what you give up.
Matt Brown · August 30, 2026 Backconnect Residential Proxies: How Rotating Gateways Work
Backconnect means one endpoint that connects you back through many different exits. Here is what happens on each request and why it changes your client code.
Chris Collins · August 30, 2026 How Residential Proxy Providers Ethically Source Their IPs
The addresses are real people's home connections, so the question that matters is whether they agreed. Here is what good sourcing looks like and how to check.
James Meadow · August 30, 2026 Residential Proxy IP Pools: How Providers Build and Refresh Them
A pool is not an inventory, it is a population that turns over constantly. Here is how it is assembled, why it churns, and what that means for your jobs.
Chris Collins · August 30, 2026 Which Countries Have the Best Residential Proxy Availability?
There is no fixed ranking, and the only availability that matters is the one in your markets at your concurrency. Here is what drives it and how to measure it.
James Meadow · August 30, 2026 How to Plan Request Volume and Concurrency on Residential Proxies
Work backwards from the records you need to the requests, concurrency and bandwidth they imply. The arithmetic is simple and it stops most capacity surprises.
Matt Brown · August 29, 2026 What to Do When Your Residential Proxy IPs Get Banned
On a rotating pool you do not recover a banned address, you replace it. The real work is finding what got it banned before the replacement goes the same way.
Chris Collins · August 29, 2026 Are Residential Proxies Safe? Security Risks and How to Reduce Them
Routing traffic through someone else's connection carries real risk. Here is what a provider can and cannot see, where the danger sits, and how to reduce it.
James Meadow · August 29, 2026