Backconnect Proxy
A proxy architecture where a single gateway endpoint routes requests through a rotating pool of backend IPs.
A backconnect proxy (also called a gateway proxy) gives you one endpoint to connect to, while the proxy's backend rotates through a pool of IPs for each request. You configure one host and port; the rotation happens invisibly on the provider's infrastructure.
Without backconnect, rotating proxies required managing a list of hundreds or thousands of individual proxy IPs, checking which ones are still working, and coding rotation logic yourself. Backconnect architecture moves all of this server-side.
The term "backconnect" describes the architecture: your client connects forward to the gateway, and the gateway connects back through a different IP in its pool for each request. From the target website's perspective, each request comes from a different IP - but you only ever connect to one endpoint.
Backconnect proxies are what most modern proxy providers offer as their standard product. When someone says "rotating residential proxies," they typically mean a backconnect architecture with a residential IP pool.
The practical implication: you never need to know the individual IPs in the pool, never need to test each one, and never need to handle IP failures in your code. The gateway handles failover automatically.
One door, many exits
A backconnect proxy is a single entry point that hides a pool behind it. You always connect to the same hostname and port. The gateway then chooses an exit device according to whatever targeting you asked for and forwards your traffic through it. Your address changes; the address you dial does not.
The alternative is a list: a file of individual addresses, each of which you connect to directly. Lists give you exact control over which exit you use and require you to manage rotation, health checks and replacement yourself. Backconnect trades that control for the pool being someone else's problem.
The design exists because residential exits are unreliable by nature. A home device drops off, and a list entry pointing at it becomes dead weight. A gateway simply picks a different device on your next connection, and you never learn that anything happened.
Control comes back through parameters rather than address selection. Instead of choosing an exit, you describe one: this country, this city, hold it for fifteen minutes. The gateway matches your description to whatever is online.
Our gateway and what you can ask it for
The residential endpoint is a backconnect gateway. Everything you control lives in the login string:
Same door, different exits
proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 the door, always the same
login any exit, new one per request
login_c_DE an exit in Germany
login_c_DE_city_Berlin an exit in Berlin
login_c_DE_s_7_ttl_1h hold one Berlin-area exit for an hour
# Our ISP, datacenter and IPv6 products are the opposite model:
# a list of addresses you connect to directly.- Because the gateway address never changes, firewall rules and antidetect profiles keep working when your exit address rotates.
- Concurrency is not limited by the number of addresses you own. Hundreds of parallel connections through one gateway is normal usage.
- A 502 from the gateway means it could not find an exit matching your description, which is a stock problem rather than a fault in your setup.
- If you need to know your exact exit address, ask for it: request api.ipify.org through the same session before you start the real work.
Backconnect versus a list
One gateway line is not one proxy
Ten copies of the same line in an antidetect browser give ten profiles the same treatment, and without different session ids they can land on the same exit.
You cannot pin a specific IP
Sticky sessions hold whatever the gateway picked, not an address you chose. If you need a known, unchanging address, buy an ISP or datacenter proxy instead.
The gateway address is not your exit
Whitelisting proxy.sotaproxy.com at a destination does nothing, because your traffic arrives from the exit device, not from us.
Rotation is not automatic in the way people expect
A new exit is chosen per connection, not per request in a keep-alive session. Long-lived connections stay where they started until they close.
Related terms
See this in practice
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