Connecting to the gateway

    One host, two protocols, three port classes.

    Everything you need to connect is one hostname, one port and one set of credentials. This page is the reference for all three.

    What a gateway endpoint is

    A proxy gateway endpoint is a single host and port that stands in front of the whole pool. You authenticate against it, and it resolves an exit address for you. There is no address list to import, no per-address health checking, and no file to refresh when addresses retire.

    On AnonEdge that endpoint is gw.anonedge.com. Every pool, every country and every session mode is reached through it. The port you connect to selects the protocol and the session mode. The credentials select the account. Nothing else in the connection string changes.

    The host

    Connect to gw.anonedge.com. DNS routes you through the closest available gateway automatically, so a client configured once keeps working as the infrastructure behind the name moves.

    Direct gateway IPs also answer. They also change. Pinning one means updating every client, every container image and every allowlist entry on the day it is retired, and learning that it was retired from a connection error rather than from a notice. Connect by hostname unless something in your stack genuinely cannot resolve DNS.

    Ports and modes

    The port carries two decisions at once: which protocol you speak, and whether the exit address changes between requests.

    PortProtocolSession mode
    823HTTP, HTTPSRotating
    824SOCKS5Rotating
    10000–20000HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5Sticky

    Session mode is a property of the port, not of a request header or a flag. Moving work from rotating to sticky is a port change and nothing else.

    Rotating

    Ports 823 and 824. The IP changes on each new request.

    Use rotating endpoints for scale and anti-blocking. Work that reads a page and moves on has no reason to hold an address, and spreading it across the pool keeps any single exit from carrying the whole request volume.

    Sticky sessions

    Ports 10000 to 20000. The IP is bound to a specific port for a configurable window: 1 to 120 minutes, 30 minutes by default.

    Each port in the range is its own session slot. Two clients on the same port share an exit. A client on the next port up gets a different one. Allocating ports is how you allocate sessions, which means your worker pool and your session pool are the same thing.

    Use sticky for anything that carries state across requests: a login, a cart, a multi-step form. A session that changes address halfway through is a session the target has every reason to drop.

    SOCKS5 vs HTTP proxy

    HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 are all supported, on the same host, with the same credentials. The choice is about what your client speaks, not about which one is better.

    • HTTP and HTTPS on port 823. The widest client support of the two. Browsers, curl, HTTP libraries and most command-line tools accept an HTTP proxy with no extra package. HTTPS is tunneled through it, so encrypted traffic stays encrypted end to end.
    • SOCKS5 on port 824. Sits below the HTTP layer, so it carries traffic that is not HTTP at all. Reach for it when your client speaks SOCKS natively, or when the protocol you are proxying is not HTTP.

    Protocol and session mode are independent choices. SOCKS5 does not imply rotating, and sticky does not imply HTTP. Both protocols answer on the sticky range as well as on their own rotating port.

    curl examples

    Four commands, one per combination. Replace login and password with the credentials from your dashboard. Each one prints the exit address it went out on, which is the fastest way to confirm the proxy is in the path.

    HTTP and HTTPS, rotating

    curl -x "http://login:[email protected]:823" https://api.ipify.org/

    HTTP and HTTPS, sticky

    curl -x "http://login:[email protected]:10000" https://api.ipify.org/

    SOCKS5, rotating

    curl -x "socks5://login:[email protected]:824" https://api.ipify.org/

    SOCKS5, sticky

    curl -x "socks5://login:[email protected]:10000" https://api.ipify.org/

    Run a rotating command twice. Two addresses. Run a sticky command twice inside the window, on the same port. One address, both times. That pair of checks confirms the credentials, the protocol and the session mode in under a minute.

    Next steps