Buying city proxies: 26 terms explained

Terms

Residential proxy

A proxy whose exit IP belongs to a home internet connection assigned by a consumer ISP, not to a data centre.

Exit IP

The IP address that the target website sees. Check it with an IP lookup such as ipinfo.io through the proxy.

Gateway

The single host you connect to (gw.eurocityproxies.com), which forwards each connection through an exit IP that matches your username parameters.

City targeting

A username parameter (-city-<name>) that limits exits to IPs geolocated to one city. Included on every EuroCity Proxies plan.

Country code

The two-letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code of a country, such as de, fr or pl, written in lower case in the username.

ASN (autonomous system number)

The number of a network that announces its own IP ranges, such as AS3320 for Deutsche Telekom. In Europe the RIPE NCC assigns them.

ASN targeting

A username parameter (-asn-<number>) that keeps the exit on one network. Free of charge at EuroCity Proxies.

Rotating session

A mode where each new connection gets an IP from the pool, usually a different one.

Sticky session

A mode that keeps one exit IP for the time you set with -session-<id>-ttl-<minutes>, up to 30 minutes at EuroCity Proxies; the IP can change earlier.

Keep-alive

An HTTP feature that reuses one open connection for several requests. On a rotating proxy, the requests on that connection keep the same IP.

HTTP CONNECT

The method an HTTP proxy uses to open a tunnel for HTTPS traffic; the proxy sees the hostname, not the page content.

SOCKS5

A proxy protocol that forwards any TCP connection. EuroCity Proxies serves it on port 7778.

socks5h

The curl and Python scheme that lets the SOCKS5 proxy resolve the hostname instead of your machine.

IP allowlist

A list of your own IP addresses that may use the proxy without a password. Up to 10 IPs at EuroCity Proxies.

Sub-user

A separate set of proxy credentials under one account, with its own traffic cap, for a client or project.

GB (gigabyte)

1,000,000,000 bytes. Usage counts upload and download, headers included.

IP geolocation database

A commercial or free dataset that estimates the country and city of IP address blocks; different databases can disagree for the same block.

Geofeed (RFC 8805)

A file in which a network operator publishes the location of its own IP prefixes, which geolocation providers can read.

CGNAT

Carrier-grade NAT: many customers share one public IP, common on mobile networks and some fixed ones.

LAU (local administrative unit)

Eurostat's term for a municipality, the level at which most city population figures on this site are given.

Functional urban area (FUA)

Eurostat's definition of a city plus its commuting zone, used on this site for the wider urban population.

VAT

Value added tax, included in consumer prices in Europe. Standard rates on this site range from 8.1% in Switzerland to 27% in Hungary.

GDPR

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679), which governs personal data processing in the EU and EEA.

Data protection authority (DPA)

The public body that supervises the GDPR or a national privacy law in one country or region, such as the CNIL in France or the BayLDA in Bavaria.

TDM exception

The text and data mining exceptions of articles 3 and 4 of the EU Copyright Directive (2019/790); rights holders can reserve their works from article 4 mining.

KYC (know your customer)

Identity checks before a purchase. EuroCity Proxies asks for no ID, no selfie and no documents to sign up, top up or buy.