Dipping my toes in the proxy game

Hey folks.

I've been around for a couple of years now, but I'm more of a techie rather than a marketer. I have for long been quite interested in how proxies are used and also operated (4g proxies more specifically).
After some reading up on the topic, and some of the software I decided that I wanted to try and set some up myself.
From what I understand there's basically more or less plug-and-play solutions such as Proxidize in one end of the spectrum, and open source software such as 3proxy in the other end of the spectrum.
I am not interested in setting up a huge farm in a couple of days with Proxidize, but rather really try to understand how things work, and build a more custom setup. And if I can make some money in that process that would be great.
I live in a country that dosen't seem to be much represented for 4g proxies in the marketplace here. That could either mean that no one wants to buy them, or that no one provides them. I'm hoping for the latter, as I think we have decent infrastructure for this kind of setup.
I decided to try and document my journey here as I thought that you guys have a lot of knowledge about how a proxy should work and what features that are important, so when I need help I could hopefully get some here

For now I have a very small and experimental setup with a small Raspberry Pi and a single modem. Had the Pi already, but received the modem today. So today I spent a couple of hours getting a basic proof of concept up and running.


Tomorrow I will continue looking into user management.
What's most popular? Shared proxies where a small handful of users share a modem, or a dedicated one with 1:1 ratio of users to modems?

I also want figure out how the prepaid card works I bought. When does it need topping up? From looking at their website you can only check the balance by calling a number, which obviously dosen't work using a 4g modem.

Looking forward to the journey!

Interested on learning. Following....

good luck, keep us posted

Best of luck during your journey.

As far as I'm concerned, proxy sellers use SIM cards with putting them in their used and cheap Android phones and turn them to into proxy devices.

And your SIM card seems kinda expensive to me. I'm not familiar with the proxy business so I probably don't know what's the best bet but I think you may want to take a look at it:

https://www.cbb.dk/shop/internet/

After some Google searches, I've found it. It costs the same as your SIM card, plus it offers unlimited data. I'd be looking it up if I were you.

Keep us posted, good luck.

I'm also interested in this. I pay a decent amount for proxies and I've kind of contemplated buying a few old Androids and some $25-30/mo plans here in the US and turning them into a proxy. I currently do this for 2FA but the phones are without data. Just SMS.

Nabil Sikder said:

Interested on learning. Following....

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Thanks!

one_sec said:

good luck, keep us posted

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I will.

blackandcoolhat said:

Best of luck during your journey.

As far as I'm concerned, proxy sellers use SIM cards with putting them in their used and cheap Android phones and turn them to into proxy devices.

And your SIM card seems kinda expensive to me. I'm not familiar with the proxy business so I probably don't know what's the best bet but I think you may want to take a look at it:

https://www.cbb.dk/shop/internet/

After some Google searches, I've found it. It costs the same as your SIM card, plus it offers unlimited data. I'd be looking it up if I were you.

Keep us posted, good luck.

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Thank you!
I have bought a prepaid SIM card, and honestly I think the pricing is quite good It's about $ 14.5 for 100 GB. The linked you posted are only for the first two months after that, it's almost 3x the price.
My thought process around this is also that I would like to keep this as much as possible to a prepaid solution. I checked the terms of the major providers in Denmark, including CBB, and their owner Telenor, and they all forbid using their plans for proxy operation. While they might not be able to detect that from the start, it does pose a great risk that they could shut down the entire account due to violation of terms. That's not possible for a prepaid solution on the same scale. They might be able to close down one SIM card, but that will just be a game of whack a mole for them.
Having said all of that, this is brand new territory for me, so there might be stuff that I am over (and under) thinking.

macdonjo3 said:

I'm also interested in this. I pay a decent amount for proxies and I've kind of contemplated buying a few old Androids and some $25-30/mo plans here in the US and turning them into a proxy. I currently do this for 2FA but the phones are without data. Just SMS.

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I did also look into if I should use phones. It seems to me that it very much depends on the use case, and to which degree you want to be able to customize things. As for me I decided to go with USB modems because it offers much more flexibility, and I am able to potentially host many modems on a single computer.

FovuAgency said:

keep posting updates

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I will. Probably not everyday, as I also have other projects.

I was able to punch in a couple of hours on this project as well today.
I didn’t really progress in the way that I had planned to, but I did get a lot wiser and realised I had already made the first mistake.

From my initial investigation I had found out that there were two popular choices for modems. A model from ZTE and one from Huawei, the latter being a bit cheaper than the first. And of course me being a cheap skate, I picked the wrong one.

From a technical point of view, it’s quite easy to get up and running as a proxy, and I got that working yesterday. The problem comes when you want to interact with the modem through the Linux software called ModemManger, now this is not strictly necessary to have working together, but it does make a lot of things A LOT easier, for example rotating the IP of the modem as well as managing more than one modem.
These types of modems can be in one of two modes. HiLink and Stick mode. In order to interact with the modems through ModemManager, we need the modem to be in Stick mode, but the modem I bought, the Huawei E3372-325 is stuck on firmware level in HiLink mode, and there is no way to change the mode without being real creative and flash new firmware onto it in a real janky way, which I honestly don’t really want to deal with. Especially not if I have to scale this operation up at some point.

So! After some research and chatting back and forth with ChatGPT, I think I need to get one of the other modems, which should work better with ModemManager, and should be able to change mode like I want.

I won’t be able to work more on this for the next couple of days due to other projects, but I will report back once I get my hands on one of the other modems (fingers crossed).

How much did the setup cost you?

savitaprasad said:

How much did the setup cost you?

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In it's current state, not a lot, ~ 60 USD. But this is only with one modem and a single SIM card. I already had the Raspberry Pi.
I actually just ordered a used cheap Android phone which I will use to test hosting the proxies on phones instead. I figured that if I need a 1:1 ratio of modems and clients, I might as well try and look into that as an option as well.
The setup might be a bit more complex initially, but I browsed some classifieds yesterday, and I might be able to source some cheap phones from there.
It should arrive in a couple of days, so I might be able to play around with it a little in the weekend.

mojdk said:

I also want figure out how the prepaid card works I bought. When does it need topping up? From looking at their website you can only check the balance by calling a number, which obviously dosen't work using a 4g modem.

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If they don't provide an online interface for that I assume you can track usage on your end at least. If you do want to resell I imagine you'd need to log how much data clients are using to provision things correctly anyway.

It will be hard to scale with a rasberry pi if you put more then 6 dongles on it you will get bottlenecks.

(btw I saw your post under my thread I will answer when I send out the update of what I have been doing all in one post so the thread won't become a mess)

quietamerican said:

If they don't provide an online interface for that I assume you can track usage on your end at least. If you do want to resell I imagine you'd need to log how much data clients are using to provision things correctly anyway.

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They do. From my initial experiments, they seem to be just what I wanted. No subscription, prepaid and as anonymous as it can get. I can simply type in the phone number of the sim card on their website, receive a one time password, and then top up as needed.

haha_OG said:

It will be hard to scale with a rasberry pi if you put more then 6 dongles on it you will get bottlenecks.

(btw I saw your post under my thread I will answer when I send out the update of what I have been doing all in one post so the thread won't become a mess)

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I think so as well. I've done some napkin math, and I think I should be able to run 10 on the newest Raspberry Pi 5 using a powered USB hub. I am waiting for a cheap Android phone to arrive tomorrow, hopefully. Then I will start experimenting with a setup using phones. I'm too cheap to buy services that manages them for me, so the experiment will be more about how to handle stuff like ip rotation without physically interferring with the device as it will be if I can get it to work.

Small update..
Just picked up the used phone I bought the other day. The seller said it was working perfectly, but just picked it up and tried to set in a sim card, only to find out that the sim card tray and the contact pins were completely bend and broken, so I don't think I'll get that working. So I reached out to the seller and started to browse for a replacement. Let's see how that goes.
Anyway, it will at least be a couple of days until I get my hands on another one

I have an interest in your progress! Interested in proxies myself and curious of what can be accomplished with them. Right now it seems google is able to detect proxies, which has made things very complicated for me. I've been trying to figure out a way to use a proxy or get one setup in another country that google cannot detect

Gamerdubs said:

I have an interest in your progress! Interested in proxies myself and curious of what can be accomplished with them. Right now it seems google is able to detect proxies, which has made things very complicated for me. I've been trying to figure out a way to use a proxy or get one setup in another country that google cannot detect

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Thanks! As mentioned previously I’m not a marketer, so I have very limited experience with proxies. I’m interested in it from a technical point of view, and want to see if I can provide a good product for a decent price so everyone benefits in the end.

jamilhossen said:

We can Help you

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Me? If so, please elaborate..

good luck my guy

Interesting. Are you able to reveal more about your background, are you a developer?

If I missed it, how do you intend to monetize this project?

TrustProxyio said:

good luck my guy

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Thank you!

thebotmaker said:

Interesting. Are you able to reveal more about your background, are you a developer?

If I missed it, how do you intend to monetize this project?

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Thanks. I am a developer/software engineer, so some of the technical aspects of this comes a bit natural to me, but there’s also a lot about I’ve never played around with before, hence the somewhat “reinventing the wheel” approach I am taking.

I guess the ultimate goal for this will be to rent out the proxies I (maybe) end up making.
I know myself quite well, and I have heavy imposter syndrome, so I will never put something half baked up for sale.
If I’m selling anything, it will be top notch.

mojdk said:

Thanks. I am a developer/software engineer, so some of the technical aspects of this comes a bit natural to me, but there’s also a lot about I’ve never played around with before, hence the somewhat “reinventing the wheel” approach I am taking.

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what language(s) do you have the most experience in?

thebotmaker said:

what language(s) do you have the most experience in?

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Elixir, Ruby and JavaScript