What makes a fast http proxy? Finding http proxies online is fairly easy to do. Spend a little time using any search engine and you’ll find plenty of http and other kinds of proxies to use. However, you quickly discover that most if not all proxies you find are not reliable. What makes a proxy server fast and is there anything you can do to find reliable proxies online? Knowing the answer to this question means you can save countless hours and spend more time using a proxy server instead of actually wasting time with bad ones.

The main reason why most proxy servers are not fast is because they are free. Free isn’t always bad but the problem with proxies is that free ones are abused. They are abused because many people try to use them at the same time. Proxies have limitations on just how many people and the load limit that they can handle at one time. If too many people start trying to use a http proxy, it quickly becomes slow and unresponsive. This is the main reason why free proxies just don't work, or they only work for a very limited time. It is not uncommon for a proxy server to work one day and stop working next. The reason is simple, it has become too popular and too many people are trying to use it at the same time.

To avoid this problem you have two possible solutions. The first is to always be on the lookout for new http proxy servers. Spend an hour or so each day hunting for fresh proxies. Keep using Google or whatever popular search engine you use to search for proxy servers. This can be a pain and is time consuming, but this is about the only way you can ensure you have fast and reliable proxies that are free. Since free proxies die so quickly, you will need to continue looking for them on a daily basis, or at least every other day. Does this sound like a big pain? It is, but there is another solution. The other solution is to setup your own proxy but this does come with a small price tag.

If you get sick and tired of wasting time looking for proxies each day, then the other solution is to setup your own http proxy server. This is much easier than it sounds but it does come with a small price tag. Setting up your own http proxies will cost around $9 USD a month. What’s the advantage? Your own proxy server is super fast and very reliable. This is possible because you share it with no-one else and have exclusive access to the server. Using this kind of fast http proxy to surf the internet is almost as fast as using your own home computer. $9 a month breaks down to about 30 cents a day. If you spend more than one hour every two days looking for proxies, then it makes perfect sense to pay 30 cents a day to get your own guaranteed proxy. Time is money, unless you think your day is worth less than 30 cents you pay for your own proxy server :)