Most people have heard of a VPN, the term Proxy is less known. However these terms are closely related. Let's start with some background context.
As our core technology we use ShadowSocksR with is a secure socks5 Proxy, designed to protect your Internet traffic. This is the latest cutting edge technology in securing your internet traffic and going around any restrictions.
Similarities
A Proxy server (proxy) or VPN server (VPN) is a computer that sits between your computer and a wider network. This “wider network” is usually the internet. A Proxy or VPN server acts an intermediary between your computer and the internet.
This means that:
- Your real Internet Protocol (IP) address is hidden from anyone on the internet. A website, for example, will see the IP address of the VPN or Proxy server when you visit it, instead of your real IP address.
- Your connection through the Proxy or VPN server is encrypted and you can't be spied upon.
- You will appear to access the internet from wherever the Proxy or VPN server is physically located. If the proxy is located in a different country to where you are, you will appear to access the internet from that country.
Differences Proxy vs VPN
The primary differences between a Proxy and regular VPNs are:
- With the latest ShadowSocks Proxy technology, the performance and security of proxies has surpassed that of VPNs. Our Proxy service is heavily encrypted and offers great speed performance in comparison to any other commercial VPN.
- Proxies are configured on a per-app basis. This means it does not take over your whole internet connection. This is an important aspect to consider in your security policy. Only the apps that you configure, such as your browser will use the Proxy server.
- VPNs are configured at the system level. This mean that they need only be configured once in order to ensure that all internet connections from all software on a device are sent to the VPN server. Depending on your use-case this can be a good thing, but it can hinder your performance as well for services that do not need to use the VPN server. It's all or nothing.
- Our SocketPro Proxy let's you configure rules on what traffic should be sent through our service and which should not. Example: You live and China and want to watch a video on a Chinese video site. With our proxy that connection would not use our service, as that would slow down connections within China, while at the same time you can access twitter and that connection would use our service through one of our servers outside China to get access to the normally blocked twitter website.
In conclusion both are great technologies, but benefits such as performance, encryption and flexibility make our ShadowSocks Proxy service the best choice.