ASN
An ASN identifies the network an address belongs to, and ASN targeting means picking one. Proxy Compare tracks 42 providers, read 5 Oct 2026, and not one publishes an ASN breakdown of its pool. The nearest published figures are pool size, from 30 providers, and country coverage, from 31.
Why it costs you money
It is the single field that separates the proxy types. A datacenter address resolves to a hosting company's ASN, a residential one to a consumer internet provider, and a site that wants to refuse automated traffic can filter on that in one step at almost no cost to itself. Everything you pay extra for in residential and ISP is buying a different answer to this lookup.
See it in the data
Related terms
- Datacenter proxyAn address belonging to a server in a datacenter. Far cheaper than residential, and the first thing a careful site blocks.
- ISP proxyA hosted address registered to a consumer internet provider. Residential-looking identity at datacenter speed, and it stays yours.
- Geo-targetingChoosing which country, city or carrier your requests appear to come from. Granularity varies enormously by provider.
- IP reputationHow a target site scores an address before serving it, based on what that address has done elsewhere.
- Subnet diversityHow spread out a pool's addresses are across networks. A large pool inside a few subnets behaves like a small one.
- Every term we define
Questions
Can I target a specific network on this site's providers?
Not from anything published. No provider Proxy Compare tracks publishes an ASN breakdown of its pool, read 5 Oct 2026. 30 of the 42 publish a pool size and 31 publish a country count, and neither tells you how many distinct networks sit behind the offer.
Why does the network matter if the country is already right?
Because a target that blocks by address range treats every address on one network as one address. Country coverage says nothing about how the pool is spread, so a large claim in the right country can still behave like a handful of addresses.
Is ASN targeting worth paying extra for?
It is sold far more often than it is documented. Ask what the option actually selects and get the answer in writing, because nothing any of these providers publishes lets you verify it from outside.