Proxy latency

Every page you open through an address waits for that trip twice, once on the way out and once on the way back. A slow address costs you nothing in accounts and hours in work.

Proxy latency is the delay a proxy adds between a request leaving your browser and the first answer coming back.

Where the delay comes from

A request that would go straight to a site now goes to the proxy first, and the proxy carries it on from there. Distance, the load on that machine and the route between them all add up.

A mobile address is the extreme case. It is carried over a phone network before it reaches the internet at all, which is why mobile addresses are the slowest to answer and the most expensive to keep.

What the check measures

Test on a row fetches an address lookup through the proxy and stops the clock at the first answer rather than at the end of the attempt. A source that refuses and sends the check to the next one does not add its refusal to your number.

It takes the same road a launch takes. An address with a login goes through the same local bridge, and an entry for your own server raises the tunnel first.

One row at a time

Check all walks the library from top to bottom and says how many answered out of how many were tried.

It goes one at a time on purpose. Fifty probes fired together look like a scan from the seller's side and spoil every timing in the batch.

Delay is not bandwidth

Delay is how long you wait before anything arrives. Bandwidth is how much arrives per second once it starts.

An address can answer quickly and then deliver slowly, and it can answer slowly and then deliver at full speed. One timed request tells you about the first of those and nothing about the second.

Often confused with

Uptime
A quick answer now says the address is alive now. Whether it will answer in an hour is a different question and this one does not ask it.
Distance
A nearer country is usually quicker, and not always. The route matters more than the map does.
Page load time
A page is hundreds of requests. The number here is one of them, measured once.

What this does not do

It does not keep watching. The number is the state at the moment you pressed the button, not a monitor that runs beside you.
The number is not kept on the row. Come back later and the row shows the address, the country and when it was last checked, without the timing.
It does not measure how much the address can carry. One request timed once says nothing about a long download or a heavy page.
Nothing in the app picks an address by speed. Addresses are handed to profiles in the order they sit in the library, and no row is ranked above another.

Check it

What is timed, what road it takes and what the row keeps afterwards.

The clock stops at the first answer, not at the end of the attempt: apps/desktop/src/main/main.js
The check takes the launch road, bridge and tunnel included: apps/desktop/test/proxy-check-uses-bridge.js
What a row remembers once the check is over: apps/desktop/src/lib/proxies.js
The library is executed against a real store on disk: apps/desktop/test/proxy-library.js

Questions

What counts as a good number?: There is no line drawn in the app for a proxy. The number is shown as measured, and what is acceptable depends on whether you are reading pages or running a flow all day.
Why does checking the whole library take so long?: Rows are tried one after another rather than together. That keeps each timing honest and keeps the burst off the seller's side.
The check says the address is quick but pages crawl.: The timing covers one request. A page is hundreds of them, and how much the address can carry is a separate matter the check does not touch.
Does a slow answer mean the proxy is broken?: No. It means the first answer took that long once. An address that does not answer at all is reported as a failure with its reason, which is a different result.
Does the timing include my own connection?: Yes. Everything between your machine and the first answer is inside the number, your own line included.

Next to this

Time an address before you open it

Press Test on a row and the answer lands on that row, taking the same road a launch takes.

Download ARMANOS Check a proxy