IP Address
A numeric label assigned to each device on a network, used to route traffic to and from it across the internet.
An IP address is the numeric identifier that lets devices find and talk to each other over a network. Every device connected to the internet has one, and it works like a postal address: it tells the network where to deliver responses. When you visit a site, your request carries a source IP so the server knows where to send the answer.
There are two versions in use. IPv4 addresses look like 192.0.2.1 - four numbers separated by dots - and there are about 4.3 billion of them, which the internet has effectively exhausted. IPv6 addresses are much longer (e.g. 2001:0db8:85a3::8a2e:0370:7334) and effectively unlimited, created to solve that shortage.
IP addresses reveal information. Through geolocation databases, an IP maps to an approximate country, region, and city, which is how sites serve localized content and enforce geo-restrictions. Through ASN lookups, an IP maps to the network that owns it - a residential ISP, a mobile carrier, or a datacenter - which is a core signal in bot detection.
A proxy changes the IP address a website sees: your request exits from the proxy's IP instead of your own, so the site records the proxy's location and ASN. This is the fundamental mechanism behind everything proxies do - geo-targeting, anonymity, rotation, and avoiding IP-based blocks.
The number that decides where packets go
An IP address identifies a network interface so that routers know where to deliver packets. IPv4 writes it as four numbers, IPv6 as eight groups of hexadecimal. Everything else about proxies is built on top of that one idea.
Addresses are allocated in blocks to networks, and those allocations are public. Anyone can look up which organisation holds a block, which country it is registered in and which autonomous system announces it. That lookup is what lets a site classify your traffic before reading a single header.
An address is not a person. Households share one through NAT, mobile carriers share one across thousands of subscribers, and offices route hundreds of employees through a handful. What an address identifies is a point on the network, and only sometimes narrowly.
What a proxy changes and what it does not
Using a proxy replaces the address the destination sees. Everything else about you travels unchanged:
Check what you present
curl https://ipinfo.io/json your own
curl -x login_c_DE:password@proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000 \
https://ipinfo.io/json the exit- The response shows the address, the organisation and the country, which is exactly the information a target uses to classify you.
- Geolocation databases are approximations. A city-level result can be wrong by a considerable distance, and different databases disagree.
- Residential exits change per connection unless you pin them with a session id. Static products keep the same address for the term.
- If the second command returns your own address, the request never went through the proxy.
Address misconceptions
An address does not identify a person
NAT and carrier sharing mean many people can sit behind one.
Geolocation is not authoritative
It is a database lookup that can be stale or simply wrong.
Changing address does not clear an account
Cookies, fingerprints and account history are separate.
Dedicated does not mean untouched
The address existed before you rented it, and its history came along.
See this in practice
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