Choosing a proxy country: where you can, where you cannot, and why databases disagree

Three products, three answers

# Country selection by product
#
  Rotating IPv6        selectable      DE, NL, AT, RU + a mixed mode
                                        changed in the dashboard and via API
  Rotating IPv4        not selectable  addresses assigned at random
                                        from an 11-country pool
  Datacenter IPv4      selectable      CA, DE, GB, NL, US, BR: you set the
    (Datacenter Shared)                 address count per country in the
                                        configurator, empty fields = random

The difference is fundamental. On rotating IPv6 the country is a property of the service: chosen at order time, changeable later, with a mixed mode where it is not pinned and addresses come from the whole pool. On rotating IPv4 no such property exists, addresses are assigned at random, and an API request to change the country returns an error explaining why. On static datacenter addresses you split the order across countries yourself: for example, 60 addresses from Germany and 40 from the United States. Leave the fields empty and the addresses are distributed across countries at random.

What actually changes with the country

The exit address changes, and with it what a target site reads about you from its geolocation database. Which also sets the limit: the country affects results, prices and content availability exactly as far as the site looks at it. If a site decides the region from account settings or a URL parameter, changing the exit changes nothing.

One detail that is rarely mentioned: on IPv6 the countries differ not only in geography but in bandwidth. Germany, the Netherlands and Austria run a 10 Gbps gateway link; Russia 2.5 Gbps. At the same price, choosing a country is also choosing a pipe.

Why the database shows the wrong country

The most common support ticket on this subject reads “you sold me the wrong country”, and the cause is usually not the seller. An address's type and geography are not measured at the moment of your request; they come from a commercial database. MaxMind describes its method as analysing registration information, traffic and usage patterns, which makes it an estimate rather than a fact stamped on the address.

The databases also disagree with each other: one service says the Netherlands, another Germany, a third Brazil from a stale record. Check with several rather than one, and cross-reference against latency: five milliseconds to an address labelled another continent means an outdated record, not a swapped country.

A CDN answers from somewhere else

This is the trap that wastes time during checks. If the site's name is resolved by your machine rather than by the proxy, you get the delivery-network node nearest to you, and the request goes there whatever your exit is. The result is a mixed picture: a German address serving content from a node next door to you.

The fix is the same switch as for a DNS leak: the name must be resolved by the proxy. In a connection string that is socks5h rather than socks5, and in a curl check the difference shows immediately in what the site answers.

Changing the country through the API

For IPv6 the country is changed by a separate request, a short code such as de or mixed, without re-creating the service. For IPv4 there is no such request: you get an error stating plainly that country selection is unavailable for this service type. That is deliberate, because a silently ignored parameter is worse than a refusal.

What to take for which job

• Regional results checking: rotating IPv6, because that is where the country is set and confirmed.
• Data collection where the region shapes content: IPv6 if the target is reachable over IPv6, otherwise IPv4 with the understanding that the country will be random.
• Jobs where a stable address matters and the country is secondary: static datacenter addresses with a random split.
• Jobs needing a stable address in a specific country: static datacenter addresses split by country in the configurator.