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 Mixed Rotating Datacenter 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

Sticky proxy ports keep the same IP for a longer period of time: up to 30 mins for your datacenter IPs.

• The countdown starts with the first request that you send
• The a session will be terminated after 30 minutes (if 30 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 (but it will really depend on what your are doing).

Set Rotating Sticky Session Interval 

You can set your rotating interval to one of the default options of 3 up to 30 minutes, however you also have the option to customise this (up to a max of 30)

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: 

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 mixed.rotating.proxyrack.net:444 -U username http://api.proxyrack.net/release

Sticky Session Information

If you want to view more information about the IP that has been assigned to your sticky session and also some of your relevant account details visit http://api.proxyrack.net/stats

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 mixed.rotating.proxyrack.net:444 -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.