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Supported SOCKS Protocols

Bright Data supports SOCKS protocol version 5: SOCKS5.

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Using SOCKS5 for your scraping tasks

The most common protocols for internet data collection are HTTP and HTTPS, some of the tools or utilities require SOCKS5 for their operations. In Bright Data, we do not distinguish between HTTP , HTTPS and SOCKS5 proxies: all our proxies support all three protocols. You can switch between protocols while using the same proxy.

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Do you really need SOCKS5?

Our HTTP and HTTPS proxy solutions are usually the best fit for scraping websites, offering lowest cost and highest performance. However, if the the task still requires SOCKS5 Bright Data can provide quality proxies around the globe.

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Supported Proxy types

SOCKS5 proxy connections are supported on all Bright Data proxy networks: Datacenter, ISP, Residential and Mobile.
Using SOCKS5 over Bright Data Residential proxy is supported only towards HTTPS targets, HTTP targets will be supported soon.

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SOCKS5 Main proxy port configuration

Bright Data uses port 22228 for SOCKS5
When using SOCKS5 make sure to use brd.superproxy.io:22228 and not the standard portfor HTTP and HTTPS protocols.

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SOCKS5 targeting with Bright Data

Bright Data supports only hostnames (domain names) for SOCKS5 proxies
Per our compliance regulation, we allow SOCKS5 requests only with hostnames/domain names relayed as target. Requests sent with explicit IPs or local IP resolution, are blocked. Hence, configure your code, client or calling application to:
  1. Use domain name as target
  2. Resolve DNS remotely and not locally
Adhering to those rules will ensure the request to get to the target domain IP, thru our proxy peer.

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Target Ports

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Datacenter & ISP

Bright Data supports all ports higher than 1024 for datacenter and ISP proxies.

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Residential & Mobile

Bright Data supports ports: 8080, 8443, 5678, 1962, 2000, 4443, 4433, 4430, 4444 and 1969 for Residential & Mobile proxies.

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Using SOCKS5 with curl, Javascript & Python

Use socks5h://brd.superproxy.io:22228 when issuing curl requests
To use curl with Bright Data SOCKS5 proxies, you have to explicitly:
  1. Add -x to your command line parameters
  2. Use SOCKS5h protocol for remote DNS lookup
  3. Use proxy address as brd.superproxy.io:22228
  4. Provide Bright Data proxy zone credentials
  5. Residential and Mobile proxies: Add curl -k option to ignore SSL errors proxies or Setup SSL Certificate
Requests which do not comply with all the above are blocked.Examples curl command:
curl -i -k -x socks5h://brd.superproxy.io:22228 --proxy-user [USERNAME]:[PASSWORD] "https://geo.brdtest.com/welcome.txt"

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Troubleshooting with curl

We recommend using curl to troubleshoot your SOCKS5 requests, and adding curl options -i or -v for printing header fields. Look for x-brd-error, x-brd-err-code and x-brd-err-msg for elaborated error messages sent by Bright Data proxy networks. To see our full error catalog (for HTTP and HTTPS as well) visit this page: Proxy errors troubleshooting

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SOCKS5 Authentication configuration

Bright Data must receive proxy zone credentials to access SOCKS5 proxy
The authentication is done also similarly to HTTP and HTTPS by relaying the user and password for the proxy access. Some tools or utilities will give you place to input the credentials and port separately as parameters, as seen in the control panel, and some will require you to provide a url with the credentials delimited single parameter: userName:password@brd.superproxy.io:22228.

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SOCKS5 Geo-location & country selection

Location setting is identical to HTTP/HTTPS proxies geo-targeting and is set by adding -country-[country code] to your SOCKS5 username. Example for curl command to get a SOCKS5 proxy in Italy (country code: it): 
curl -i -k -x socks5h://brd.superproxy.io:22228 --proxy-user [proxy zone user]-country-it:[zone password] "https://geo.brdtest.com/welcome.txt" -v

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Difference between SOCKS5 and SOCKS5h

The difference between SOCKS5 and SOCKS5h lies in how they handle DNS (Domain Name System) resolution:
  1. SOCKS5 : In the standard SOCKS5 proxy, the client resolves the DNS. This means that the domain name (e.g., example.com ) is resolved into an IP address before it is passed through the proxy. The proxy then routes traffic to the resolved IP address.
  2. SOCKS5h : The “h” stands for “hostname.” In this case, the proxy server resolves the DNS. The client sends the domain name (not the IP address) to the proxy server, which resolves it and forwards the request. This is useful if you want to hide the destination domain names from the client’s network.
To summarize:
  • SOCKS5 : DNS resolution happens on the client-side .
  • SOCKS5h : DNS resolution happens on the proxy-side .
Bright Data supports proxy side SOCKS5h only.