Full Guide

About Proxidize

Proxidize is a 4G mobile proxy creation and management software created to help users build their own 4G mobile proxies using 4G dongles/modems. Proxidize was designed with a philosophy of simplicity and efficiency in mind so that using Proxidize you will be able to build 4G mobile proxy setups of any size with little to no effort and no technical knowledge whatsoever.

We have years of experience in the proxy industry and to this very moment, Proxidize is the largest and most advanced of all DIY proxy solutions. We spent months researching the needs of the commercial proxy market and we can say with full confidence that Proxidize is an absolutely essential tool in the hands of any proxy user. We previously ran multiple proxy selling operations and created the world's most advanced resource on proxies PROXY KNOW. You can rest assured you are dealing with a highly professional enterprise that understands yours and your business needs very well.

Proxidize can be used to create 4G mobile proxies in any country using any mobile carrier. With Proxidize there are no limits. People use Proxidize all around the world from North America to Europe to Asia.

Why Residential-Mobile Proxies?

4G mobile proxies are the latest and most advanced type of proxy. Mobile proxies are a type of residential proxy that provides superior performance to regular residential proxies. 

4G/LTE mobile proxies are so powerful that they render traditional IP bans completely useless, this is thanks to a new technology used by mobile carriers called CGNAT. Carrier Grade Network Address Translation is a very simple concept that means your current IP is being shared by hundreds if not thousands of real people. Websites know this very well and they know if they ban a single IP they could ban hundreds of real users. 

Since hundreds of real users are using the same IP that your bot is using, it makes it a lot harder to detect and makes most anti-automation algorithms useless. Basically, the real users are camouflaging your bot and/or automation software.

4G mobile proxies work by redirecting the proxy connection through a SIM card often connected to a 4G dongle/modem and therefore giving you access to the 3G/4G/LTE network. There's a lot of complicated technology under the hood, but Proxidize takes care of all the complexity and gives you the ability to create your own 4G mobile proxies in seconds.

Once you have all the hardware and data plans ready, you can find the instructions to install Proxidize in our Getting Started guide: https://proxidize.com/getting-started/

ORDER HARDWARE

Getting Started With The Hardware

The 4G mobile proxy hardware requires 4 main components:

  1. USB modems/dongles
  2. A host server to connect the modems to
  3. USB Hub
  4. SIM cards with data plans

 

In this guide, we will be discussing the exact requirements you need to get started with Proxidize, specifically the hardware.

Installation is as simple as plugging the hardware together and running the script. Here's a small sample video of the Proxidize installation process:

Terminology:

There are a lot of different terms that are used in the proxy world, so we'll explain each one in detail.

  • Proxy: A proxy or a proxy server is a software that acts as an intermediary between 2 clients by routing the connection from one client to another. For a more detailed definition, read the Wikipedia article.
  • Mobile Proxy: A mobile proxy is any proxy that routes the connection through a real mobile network maintained by a mobile carrier and is actively being used by regular users.
  • 4G Proxy: Another name for mobile proxies, both are the same exact things. The only difference is mobile proxies can include both 3G (HSPA/WCDMA) and 4G (LTE) proxies.
  • Residential Proxy: A residential proxy is any proxy that routes the connection through any residential ISP where the subnet is actively being used by residential users. All 4G mobile proxies are residential but not vice versa.
  • Setup: When we say a setup, we mean the hardware you have that you're using for Proxidize, the Raspberry Pis/PCs, USB modems, etc.
  • USB ModemA USB device that connects to the 4G mobile carrier network using a SIM card with data enabled. Proxidize supports more than 50 different 4G dongles/modems.
  • USB Dongle: Same exact things as a USB modem. Some countries use the term 4G modem while other countries use dongle.
  • Proxidize Box: The Proxidize Box is our own device that you can use to create your proxies. The Proxidize Box is superior to the Raspberry Pi since it supports up to 20 dongles/modems while being cheaper. It is basically a mini-PC that you can connect Ethernet, HDMI, and peripherals to.
  • Host: When we say host, we mean any Proxidize Box, PC, or Raspberry Pi that you connect the USB modems/dongles to.
  • Back-end: A back-end connection is a connection from where the proxy originates. In most cases, it'll be from your router's ISP. However, Proxidize Enterprise will soon support 4G mobile back-end where there's no need for a router or a back-end ISP.
  • Raspberry Pi: A Raspberry Pi is a Single Board Computer based on an ARM CPU. You can find more information on the Wikipedia article.
  • RPI: Short for Raspberry Pi.
 

Preparing the hardware yourself

Please note:

Using your own hardware comes with no warranties or hardware help from Proxidize. Using 3rd party hardware with Proxidize often comes with many issues that we will not be able to help you with.

Getting Bulk SIM Cards and Data Plans:

 Picking Data Plan:

You need SIM cards to be able to connect to the 4G mobile carrier's network, and with these SIM cards you need a data plan. Getting SIM cards in bulk might sound difficult, but it's actually easier than you expect.

When picking a data plan make sure you understand your uses. It's difficult to predict data use when you haven't measured it, but somewhere around:

  1. For social media management: 5-15 GB/account/month
  2. For SEO scraping, no pictures: 0.5-6.0 GB/thread/month
  3. Any scraping with images/video expect 10-30 GB/thread/month.

Social plans are a great way to get unlimited data at a good price if you're only dealing with social media.

Data prices vary a lot by country, but you should expect to pay around $20 - $30 per data plan monthly or about $1 per GB of data per month, this is great when you consider you get access to almost unlimited IPs from your exact city.

Buying SIM Cards:

In the majority of countries around the world, you can walk into any 4G mobile store that sells SIM cards and buy them. Generally getting anything less than 50 modems should be an easy task.

If you plan on getting more than 50 dongles/modems, it's best to do it through a business account with the 4G mobile carrier. If they ask for a purpose you can say it's for your employees, tracking company cars, etc. or you can be honest and say it's for proxies that you use for research purposes and most carriers will be happy to take your money. This step is a lot easier than you might expect.

Choosing and Buying the Right USB Dongle/Modem​

Proxidize requires the USB modems/dongles to be able to connect to the mobile carrier’s network from the SIM card in order to create your 3G/4G mobile proxies. Modems or dongles are practically small USB routers that connect directly to the carrier. The way Proxidize 4G mobile proxies work is by routing the proxy connection from a device connecting to the proxy to the mobile network and from there to the internet and back.

Proxidize supports more than 50 different 3G and 4G dongles/modems and even more modems are to be supported soon. Every Huawei Hilink and most ZTE dongles are supported.

Fully supported models:

  1. Proxidize-153 Dongle
  2. Proxidize-510 Dongle
  3. Huawei E3372h
  4. Huawei E3372s
  5. Huawei E8372h
  6. Huawei E303h
  7. Huawei E353h
  8. Huawei E3276
  9. Huawei E3276s
  10. Huawei E3272
  11. Huawei E3131
  12. Huawei E3531
  13. Huawei E3351
  14. Huawei E3251
  15. Huawei E392
  16. Huawei E398
  17. Huawei E397
  18. Huawei E3276
  19. Huawei E3272
  20. Huawei E8278
  21. Huawei E323S
  22. Huawei UML397
  23. Huawei EC3372
  24. Huawei K5005
  25. Huawei K5007
  26. Huawei K5150
  27. Huawei W5101
  28. ZTE MF861
  29. ZTE MF832G
  30. ZTE MF831
  31. ZTE MF833
  32. ZTE MF832u
  33. ZTE MF832s
  34. ZTE MF827
  35. ZTE MF826
  36. ZTE MF79
  37. ZTE MF75
  38. ZTE MF820
  39. ZTE MF820D
  40. ZTE MF820T
  41. ZTE MF820S2
  42. ZTE MF880
  43. ZTE MF821
  44. ZTE MF821D
  45. ZTE MF821S2
  46. ZTE MF822
  47. ZTE MF823
  48. ZTE MF825
  49. ZTE MF825C
  50. ZTE MF831
  51. ZTE MF170
  52. ZTE MF730M
  53. ZTE MF667
 

Note: 3G modems are not recommended as they greatly affect the usability of your proxy as you often only get 10% to 30% of the advertised speed.

Selecting the Right Model for Your Country

Please note when you order the hardware from us you won't have to worry about this as we will check all the bands in your country before shipping and send you the correct modem. 

Different modem/dongle models support different cellular bands or frequencies, these are needed to allow multiple mobile carriers and different technologies (3G, 4G, etc.) to operate in the same geographical area, as each mobile carrier or cellular technology generally needs its own bands to run their network on, otherwise there will be interference.

Fortunately, most of the world uses the same bands except North and South America. If you buy a dongle/modem in Europe or in China it will work globally except in the Americas and the same is true for when buying a dongle/modem from the Americas where they won't work properly in the rest of the world.

The general global band distribution is the following:

  • In Europe, Africa, and all of Asia except China you will need the Proxidize-153, Huawei E3372h-153 or E3372h-320 model.
  • In China, you will need the Huawei E3372h-607. This model will also work in Europe, Africa, and all of Asia.
  • In the Americas, you will need the Proxidize-510, E3372h-510 or E3372h-511 model.

If you want to be extra cautious since there are a few exceptions to these bands, you can find the mobile bands your carrier uses here, and compare them to the E3372h models to the left.

Finding a Source

USB modems/dongles used to be extremely common around 2010 to 2014 especially in developing countries where almost everyone relied on them for internet access. Today where most countries have better ADSL and fiber internet infrastructure, these dongles/modems are in much less demand, therefore prices have dropped but it also made it more difficult to find them.

Every mobile carrier in the world likely has a few thousands of these modems sitting in a warehouse collecting dust. Through your business account with this mobile carrier, talk to your rep and ask if you can buy them, most of the time the answer will be yes, and you will get a decent price since if they're not sold they'll be sent to India or China to be recycled at a loss for the carrier.

Note: modems bought from carriers often come carrier-locked which means they can only be used with SIM cards from this carrier. So if you plan to buy dongles from a carrier keep this in mind. Modems can be unlocked, but it's difficult and time-consuming.

If you can't find any 4G dongles from your carrier, the next place to look is in local mobile stores, especially chain ones. Same scenario as with the carriers where they often have some collecting dust. Take a few minutes to collect the contact information of the largest 10 stores in your city and call or email them one by one. Always try to go for unlocked modems.

 

You should expect to pay: $65-$100/modem for decent models. A little more if you're in North or South America.

Testing and Verifying Compatibility

Note: When you buy the hardware from us you do not need to do this as we test everything before shipping.

This might sound complicated, but it's actually very simple. The Huawei USB modems/dongles can run 2 different software versions, one is called Hi-Link mode, and this is the one we want, and the other is called "PPP" or "stick" mode and this one is not supported. Always ask the seller about the mode and make sure it's Hi-Link, if they say they don't know what that is, just ask them any of the following questions:

  • Does it support Linux?
  • Is it a driverless version?
  • Does it have a web dashboard?
 

And if the answer is yes to any of these questions that means it's in Hi-Link mode.

Even if the seller says it's Hi-Link, it's good practice to test it first. The test is very easy, just plug the modem into a macOS or Windows device and wait for the browser to open the modems' web dashboard or the website msn.com  that looks like the picture to the left. (msn.com is the website the modem uses to check for internet connection.)

Also, disconnect Ethernet and WiFi and test the connection from the modem, it can take up to 40 seconds to connect.

Note: This test cannot be done on Linux.

Choosing the right USB Hub

We recommend using industrial USB hubs which prices range from $100-$200. 

To be able to connect a high number of 4G dongles to create 4G mobile proxies, we need a USB hub. A USB hub is just a peripheral device that extends the number of available USB ports on a host.

We need multiple dongles/modems to be able to create multiple dedicated 4G mobile proxies.

Proxidize software itself can support up to 250 dongles per device, however, all devices have some sort of hardware limit, even when using a USB hub.

Examples of the maximum supported dongles/modems:

  1. The Proxidize Box supports 20 dongles/modems.
  2. The Raspberry Pi 4B supports 14 dongles/modems
  3. Any regular low or high-end laptop should be able to support up to 15-20 dongles/modems.
  4. A regular PC with a USB 3.2 10GB/s USB controller chip can support up to 40 modems. Using USB PCI-E extension cards, this number can be increased up to 250 modems, but that's highly unrecommended as it will affect stability.
 

Regarding supported USB hubs, in theory, any USB hub with external power should work just fine, but we recommend you only use tested hubs.

 
Note: USB 2.0 or 3.0 does not matter since all the modems are 2.0, having USB 3.0 will offer no advantage whatsoever.

Choosing the device to host the proxy:

We recommend getting a Proxidize Box mainly because it offers the best value. A Proxidize Box is a modified SBC very similar to the Raspberry Pi but it supports more dongles and is more stable.

Proxidize can support a Raspberry Pi or a Linux PC/Laptop as the host. The host device is used to connect the USB modems and host the Proxidize software, plus it servers in routing the connection from the proxy to the 4G mobile network.

When choosing a PC or a Raspberry Pi there are many things to consider, if you don't have any experience with Linux or if you're not a techy person in general then it's best to select the Proxidize Box or a Raspberry Pi as the PC can be more difficult to manage. There are really no benefits to using a PC over a Proxidize Box.

 

Note: When Proxidize is running on a host device, no other networking-related software can run. This is due to technology complications as Proxidize takes over networking completely and any interference will break regular function.

Once you have all the hardware and data plans ready, you can find the instructions to install Proxidize in our Getting Started guide: https://proxidize.com/getting-started/

GETTING STARTED WITH PROXIDIZE

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- 73 Windermere Ave, Lansdowne, PA 19050, United States

- 85 Great Portland Street, London, England, United Kingdom

All Proxidize hardware is assembled and shipped with :heart: from the United States :us: and the Netherlands :flag-nl:

 

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All Proxidize hardware is assembled and shipped with :heart: from the United States :us: and the Netherlands :flag-nl:

 

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