Random Vs Sticky Ports

When you visit your product dashboard you will see that you have the option to select from either Random or Sticky Sessions when using your Unmetered (Megaproxy) Residential proxies.

Random Port 

When you are using the Random proxy port each connection you make generates a unique IP address (exit node) on each request you make to the server. For example you open a webpage with an IP, but if you do any further action like reload the page or click a link the IP will already have changed. 

Using the Random port is valuable if you are doing things like, scraping thousands of pages or doing web data collection but this might not suit your needs. For example you might need to access one website for an extended period and don’t want to lose your connection. 

In this case what we recommend is that you choose an IP from the Sticky Sessions and then set a rotating time limit.  

Sticky Sessions

You can set your sticky proxy ports to keep the same IP for a set period of time. You can set this rotation interval to be however long as you like. However, if your IP goes offline in the middle of this period of time then we will have to rotate you to a new IP at that time.

• The countdown starts with the first request that you send
• The a session will be terminated after 60 minutes (if 60 mins is set) after the first initial request
• Once a session gets terminated – you will receive a new sticky IP and same rules apply again

For best results we recommend that you select 10 MINUTES and ensure AUTO REPLACE is ticked.

This will mean that at the end of the 10 minute session a new IP address will automatically replace the previous one. You do not have to keep adding in a new port each time and if the IP goes offline we will automatically replace it with a new working iP.

It is important to note that because these are residential IPs your connection may go offline. 

Auto Replace Sticky Sessions

You can set your Sticky Sessions to auto replace the assigned IP address with a closely related IP if the proxy goes offline. We will attempt to replace the new IP with the same or similar location you are currently using.  

So if you'd like to keep a super long sticky session without worrying about the IP (exit node) going offline this feature will help you by automatically replacing any offline proxies with a closely related IP to your original request.

We attempt to select an IP based on the following criteria: ISP and CITY and COUNTRY If there are no IP's available for the above criteria then we will try to select on the following: ISP and COUNTRY

If you would like to use this dynamically (so per connection) you can take advantage of this feature by appending autoReplace-True to your username when authenticating.

Set Rotating Sticky Session Interval 

You can set your rotating interval to one of the default options of 3 up to 60 minutes, however you also have the option to customise this (up to a max of 60 mins).

You can set how long your Sticky Session will rotate by adding the parameter refreshSeconds or refreshMinutes to your username.

Want to watch a video walkthrough instead? This YouTube video will walk you through setting the rotation interval: 

Username	username-refreshMinutes-5  username-refreshSeconds-30
FireFox Example
cURL Example	curl -x megaproxy.rotating.proxyrack.net:10000 -U username-refreshMinutes-5    http://example.com

Releasing a Sticky Session 

If you would like to remove the assigned proxy from your sticky session you can do this by executing a request through your sticky port by visiting http://api.proxyrack.net/release

URL	http://api.proxyrack.net/release *Note that all spaces in the name must be removed for it to match
FireFox Example
cURL Example	curl -x megaproxy.rotating.proxyrack.net:10000 -U username http://api.proxyrack.net/release

Sticky Session Information

URL	http://api.proxyrack.net/stats *Note that all spaces in the name must be removed for it to match
FireFox Example
cURL Example	curl -x megaproxy.rotating.proxyrack.net:10000 -U username http://api.proxyrack.net/stats

Troubleshooting - Sticky Sessions are not working 

There are a few reasons or things to consider if you are trying to use Sticky Session ports and they are not connecting (so they aren't working!) 

A) You may be trying to connect too much bandwidth. 

This might happen as an example if you are trying to connect your proxies to your Mac OS (so the entire device/computer) rather than just say connecting to your Firefox browser.