Web Hosting for Proxy Sites

By Web Hosting on Nov 15, 2007 in Technology, Web Hosting

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Web Hosting for Proxy Sites

Many people who surf the internet today wish to do so without their identity being noticed. Some don’t want website to track their IP or where they are coming from or some need to do activities that have the need to have their identity concealed. Whatever the reason, the easiest way to mask your identity while surfing the internet is via Proxy sites. Different proxies work in different ways but basically what they do is they scramble your IP address or hide it along with all traces of where you are coming from to help you remain anonymous. Hosting for proxy sites is hard to find these days because of legal reasons, CPU/RAM requirements, and bandwidth constraints that a proxy site needs.

Before choosing a host for a proxy site, you need to personally ask the host if they allow proxy sites on their servers. Many will say no because of the legalities involved with hosting proxy sites. Proxy sites are used often by hackers to conceal their identity while break into other websites and therefore proxy sites do indirectly promote illegal activity. Many corporations also do not look kindly upon hosts that allow proxy sites because proxies are an easy way that their employees can get around the company’s firewall and surf sites that they should not be surfing during the day. Many webmasters also do not like proxy sites and have mechanisms to prevent proxy surfers from viewing their content because proxy sites either block their Ads or replace their ads with the proxy owner’s own ads and thereby deny webmasters the ad revenue they would otherwise earn. For these reasons many hosts simply do not allow proxy sites to be hosted on their servers and if they find that your site is hosting a proxy, they will terminate your service and you will not get a refund of any sort.
Besides legal issues another reason that web hosts do not allow proxies on their servers is because of the CPU/RAM requirements that it takes to run a popular proxy. For popular proxy scripts such as PHPproxy or CGIproxy, it takes an extremely large amount of computing power to serve a relatively small amount of visitors. In fact, proxy sites are probably one of the most resource intensive, if not the most resource intensive type of sites out there. A proxy with only 3000 unique visitors a day may require a dedicated server to run. This is because of two reasons. The first one being that the CPU/RAM power required to run the database queries and code to keep you anonymous is very intensive and puts a large amount of strain on the server. The second is that unlike traditional sites where the visitors visits a few pages before leaving, users of a proxy site will use that proxy to do all their web surfing. So instead of averaging 3 page views per visitor like a regular site, it is not uncommon for a proxy to average over 20 or 30 page views per visitor use. This translates into more queries, more code being executed, and more resource requirements. Besides this, a few proxy programs also require being able to directly execute command line code. Not only is this a security risk, but it also puts additional strain on web servers. Because of these large resource usage issues, you will need to find a host that is specifically configured to host a certain kind of proxy script.
The last main issue with proxies is bandwidth constraints. Even though proxy sites do not have large flash or movie files that need to be run, they do consume a large amount of bandwidth. I do not have exact figures for this because I do not run a proxy myself, but talking to people that run proxies have confirmed with me that they use many times the bandwidth of a normal site. This is probably once again due to both the processes they have to run to consistently hide your identity and also because of the large amount of page views per visit that proxies tend to receive. Running a large proxy with less than 200GB of bandwidth is not a smart thing to do.
Now since we have looked at the requirements for running a proxy site, lets look at the possible hosting solutions that a proxy site can be run on.

1. Free hosting - This is probably not the ideal solution to run a proxy on. Before you sign up, read the fine print in the Terms of Service carefully or ask the owner yourself if proxy sites are allowed or not on their free hosting service. Most free hosting services will not tolerate proxy sites on their servers. Also before signing up, constantly monitor sites that are on that free hosting service to get a good idea of the server speed and uptime. If the servers are already slow, do not attempt to run a proxy site off of that free hosting service. Also try to avoid free hosting that is Ad-free, post-free, or attempts to be completely free. These hosts tend to not stick around along because they simply have no way to financially maintain their free hosting service. Thinking about it this way: servers cost money and without any way to recoup that money, a company soon goes under. Even if a free host meets all your requirements and allows proxies, I would suggest only hosting personal proxies for you and a small group of friends on any free host. There simply is not a free hosting service out there that can support the needs of a large and popular proxy network.
2. Shared hosting - In regards to hosting proxies, shared hosting is a lot like free hosting. You must read the Terms of Service agreement to make sure that the shared host allows you to run proxies on their servers and monitor them for a few days before you buy to make sure their server speeds are up to par with what you need. I generally would not go with a cheap host that sells gigabytes of space and tera-bytes of bandwidth for less than $10 as these hosts will happily kick you off because you are using too much CPU and RAM on their servers. Like free hosts, shared hosting is not an environment you want to run a popular proxy on. For a small proxy that only you and your friends will use, a nice shared plan may be the solution, but if you are trying to make a decent amount of money off of a proxy and have a lot of traffic, then shared hosting is not your answer.

3. Semi-dedicated hosting - Semi dedicated hosting is basically a large shared account on a server with a low client count. Since there are fewer people sharing server resources, each person has a much high tolerance for CPU and Bandwidth limits. As for all kinds of hosting, the Terms of Service agreement must be read before signing up and the server should be monitored to ensure good uptime. Being on semi-dedicated hosting does not mean your account cannot get suspended because of overuse of CPU and Bandwidth as there are still other people on the server who share resources with you, although this is less likely because the tolerances are much higher. Hosts are also more willing to work with larger customers about these issues rather than suspending them right away. For a mid-sized proxy, this may be a good solution, however, if you are running a really high-traffic proxy, you should probably look into a dedicated server.
4. VPS hosting - VPS hosting is somewhat like semi-dedicated hosting except that you will never get suspended for CPU/RAM overage uses. Instead your site will just be slowed. In a VPS, a few people share the server but each person is portioned off a separate piece of the server and can only use the resources in that portion of the server. Therefore, other people on the server are not effected by their overages. Usually VPS plans have burst usage rates if your site has a sudden spike in traffic. As always, you must read the Service agreements and make sure the provider allows proxy sites. VPS providers are usually more lenient about content than shared providers. If your looking for a safe midway stop between shared and dedicated hosting for a proxy site, then a VPS would be the solution you are looking for until you can afford a dedicated. If a normal VPS is not enough, you may want to look at wiredtree.com and their hybrid dedicated solution. This is basically a large VPS plan with 1GB guaranteed RAM at all times. This VPS has more power than most entry-level dedicated server and would be a decent choice for expansion.
5. Dedicated server - This is the ideal solution for a large proxy. You still should read the Terms of Service agreement to make sure proxies are allowed but you won’t have any overage issues. If your site slows down due to not enough CPU or RAM power, you can always pay to upgrade your hardware. Likewise on a dedicated server, there are always ways to pay for additional bandwidth on the cheap. If your site is already too big for a VPS, then at least go with a mid-level dedicated server that features a dual-core and 1GB of RAM asanything less will be not that much more powerful than a high-end VPS plan. If your generating a decent stream of revenue from your proxy, then a dedicated server is the way to go.

Now that we have looked at the different types of hosting solutions, lets look at two popular proxy scripts.

1. CGI proxy (http://www.jmarshall.com/tools/cgiproxy/) - This is an old and tried-and-true proxy script and the proxy script of choice for many. It includes SSL protection and has gotten around the “address family not supported” problem. It is great for cloaking your identity and has several features like HTML coding and cache refreshing that are very attractive to many webmasters. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most server intensive scripts on the web and will require a large amount of processing power to run to any extent. If you have a high-end VPS or a dedicated, you might want to look at this. Otherwise, go with some other type of proxy script.
2. PHP Proxy - (http://sourceforge.net/projects/php-proxy/) - PHP proxy is another great proxy script that has many features. It is the proxy of choice for many webmasters because of its feature set and the fact that it is less server-intensive than CGI proxy. This is the most commonly used proxy server for those running on free or shared hosts.

For any hosting solution you choose for your proxy, the Terms of Service must allow proxies and the host must be aware what kind of site you are running. For a personal proxy that few will use, a shared account will suffice but for a large proxy, you are best served by buying a cheap managed offshore server. The reason offshore servers are better for proxies is because they are much more relaxed about the legal constraints of proxies than server based in the United States. US law generally does not apply to offshore servers or servers hosted in various different countries. If someone wants to legally take you down, it is far harder for them to do so if your server is located off-shore.

Whether you choose to run PHP proxy, CGI proxy, or some other program to run your service, be sure to plan out your hosting needs and buy accordingly.

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