Where do your datacenter IPs come from?

What is a datacenter IP, technically and legally?

A datacenter IP is an address from a block that a regional internet registry (RIR) has assigned to a network operator, and that the operator uses for servers rather than for home customers.

The chain of custody has three links:

1. The registry. Five RIRs share the world's address space: ARIN (North America), RIPE NCC (Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia), APNIC (Asia-Pacific), LACNIC (Latin America and the Caribbean) and AFRINIC (Africa). Each publishes who holds each block.
2. The holder. A hosting company, transit carrier or address owner holds the block and announces it on the internet from its autonomous system (ASN) using BGP.
3. The lessee. Address space is often leased: the holder lets another network use a block under contract, and the registry record or a routing object shows that arrangement.

Our IPs are leased addresses of this kind, routed by hosting networks in commercial datacenters. That is a normal, documented part of how IPv4 is used today, since the central IANA pool ran out in 2011 and most registries ran out of free blocks in the years that followed.

Is any home or mobile device involved?

No. No residential or mobile device is involved in a RackProxies IP. Your traffic leaves from a server in a datacenter, on an address registered to a hosting network.

This is the main difference from residential and mobile proxy networks, which route traffic through home connections or phones whose owners take part through an app or a software kit. Those networks raise questions of consent; a datacenter IP does not, because there is no third-party household or handset in the path. The datacenter vs residential comparison covers the other differences.

The trade-off is honest labelling: IP databases mark our addresses as hosting, and we never claim otherwise.

Why do you not name your upstream partners?

We do not name our partners because the contracts that give us address space are commercial agreements, and partners can change over time.

What we commit to instead:

• Every IP is registered to a hosting or network operator in a public registry, and you can check it.
• Dedicated: during your rental, each IP is assigned to your account only and is not shared with other RackProxies customers.
• Abuse reports about an IP we rent go to [email protected]. Abuse reports are reviewed by a person, and confirmed abuse leads to suspension.
• Our upstream network provider may keep its own logs under its own policy; the privacy policy explains what we keep.

How can I verify the registration of an IP?

You can verify any IP with RDAP, the registries' modern replacement for WHOIS. RDAP returns structured JSON: the block's range, its holder, the registry, and abuse contacts. The rdap.org service forwards each query to the right RIR.

# 203.0.113.24 is a documentation address; use an IP from your account
curl -sL https://rdap.org/ip/203.0.113.24

# The fields to read in the JSON answer:
#   startAddress / endAddress  the block that contains the IP
#   name, entities             the holder and its contacts
#   port43 or links            the registry that answered

Can an IP have a history before my rental?

Yes. An IPv4 address can be decades old, and it may have been used by other people before your rental. Dedicated means no other RackProxies customer uses it while you rent it; it does not mean the address was never used.

If an IP is listed on a blocklist that stops your lawful use, write to support. If an IP does not work or is unusable for a lawful use, write to support: we fix it or replace it with an IP in the same country, subject to stock.