What a gateway does on every connection#
- Authenticates the client by credentials or by its source IP (whitelist).
- Parses the username parameters: country, state, city, ASN, session id, hold time.
- Picks an exit that matches, or reuses the one bound to the session id.
- Opens the connection to the destination through that exit and copies bytes both ways.
- Counts the traffic for billing and returns a gateway error if something failed before the destination.
Gateway versus exit#
The gateway's own IP address is not what the destination sees; the exit IP is. Whitelisting on the target side must therefore use dedicated static addresses, not a gateway hostname whose exits change.
How it works at ProxShift#
ProxShift runs two gateways, res.proxshift.com for residential and mob.proxshift.com for mobile, each on port 9000 (HTTP/S) and 9001 (SOCKS5), sharing one credential pair per account.