Proxy Basics: ISP, ASN, Native IP, Broadcast IP and UDP

Short answer: a proxy sends your traffic out through another IP address, and a few properties decide what that IP is good for: who owns it (the ISP and its ASN), whether it is used in the country where it is registered (a native IP) or announced from somewhere else (a broadcast IP), whether it stays the same (static or rotating), and what traffic it can carry (HTTP, SOCKS5 and UDP). This guide explains each term in plain language and shows how to check an IP yourself.

The terms at a glance

Term	In one sentence
ISP	The company that provides internet access and owns the IP addresses it assigns.
ASN	The number that identifies a network on the internet, such as an ISP's; every IP address belongs to one.
IP type	Whether an IP belongs to a home broadband, mobile carrier, ISP, business or hosting network.
Native IP	An IP used in the country where it is registered, announced by a local network.
Broadcast IP	An IP registered in one country but announced and used from another.
Static or rotating IP	Stays the same for the whole plan, or changes between requests or sessions.
Dedicated or shared IP	Used by you alone, or by several customers at once.
HTTP(S) proxy	A proxy for web traffic; it carries TCP only.
SOCKS5	A general-purpose proxy protocol that carries any TCP connection, and UDP.
UDP	The transport behind calls, games, DNS and HTTP/3; an HTTP proxy cannot carry it.
Bandwidth and traffic	How fast data can move (Mbps), and how much data moves (GB).

Who owns an IP: ISP, ASN and IP type

ISP

An internet service provider (ISP) is a company that connects homes and businesses to the internet, such as a cable, fiber or mobile operator. ISPs hold blocks of IP addresses and assign them to their customers, so every IP address has an owner on record.

An ISP proxy is a static IP registered to an ISP but hosted on server infrastructure instead of in someone's home. It keeps the ISP registration while staying online and unchanged for the whole plan, which is why ISP proxies are also called static residential proxies.

ASN

The internet is made of tens of thousands of independent networks, called autonomous systems: ISPs, mobile carriers, cloud providers and large companies. Each one has an autonomous system number (ASN), assigned by one of the five regional internet registries, and tells the rest of the internet which IP ranges it handles through a routing protocol called BGP. This is called announcing a range.

Every public IP address is announced by an ASN, and the ASN tells you whose network the IP is on. For example, AS7922 is Comcast, a US cable ISP, and AS15169 is Google.

IP type

IP databases label each IP with the kind of network its ASN belongs to. The usual types are:

Residential: home broadband from an ISP.
Mobile: a 4G or 5G carrier network. Carriers share each public address among many subscribers through carrier-grade NAT.
ISP: addresses registered to an ISP. ISP proxies fall here, although they run on servers.
Business and hosting: a company's own network, or a cloud or server provider.

The IP type and the ASN are public: any website can look them up. Databases use slightly different labels, and they do not always agree.

Where an IP is: geolocation, native and broadcast IPs

IP geolocation

An IP address does not carry a location. Websites and apps estimate it with IP geolocation databases, which combine registration records, the network that announces the IP and other measurements. Different databases can place the same IP in different cities, or even different countries, especially soon after a range has moved.

Native IP

A native IP is used in the country where it is registered: the range is registered in that country and announced there by a local network, usually the ISP that owns it. Registration, routing and geolocation all point to the same country, so databases agree on where the IP is.

Every NanoIP ISP proxy is a native IP, registered with a local ISP in the country it serves.

Broadcast IP

A broadcast IP is registered in one country but announced, or "broadcast", from a network in another. For example, a range registered in the United States can be announced from servers in another region, and its geolocation records are then updated to show the country it is sold for. Providers use broadcast IPs to offer many countries from a few server locations, and they are often cheaper than native IPs.

The term comes from the proxy market and has nothing to do with a broadcast address in networking. In practice, a broadcast IP differs from a native one in three ways:

Databases may disagree. One database can show the country the IP is sold for while another shows where it is actually announced.
Latency follows the real location. Traffic still travels to the servers that announce the range, so the response time may not match the country shown.
Location is less consistent. Work tied to one market, such as local content, local prices or accounts in that country, depends on every service placing the IP in the same country.

How to check an IP

Look up the IP in an IP database. On the command line:
bash
```
curl https://ipinfo.io/8.8.8.8/json
```
For Google's public DNS address, the response includes:
json
```
{
  "ip": "8.8.8.8",
  "city": "Mountain View",
  "region": "California",
  "country": "US",
  "org": "AS15169 Google LLC"
}
```
To check the IP of a proxy you use, send the same request through the proxy; the getting started guide shows the command for NanoIP.
Read org: it starts with the ASN, followed by its owner. A local ISP or carrier points to an ISP, residential or mobile IP; a cloud or server provider points to a hosting IP.
Check that the owner operates in the country shown. A US IP on a US ISP's ASN is consistent; a network based in another region is a reason to look closer.
Look the IP up in a second database. If the two disagree on the country, the IP may be broadcast, or its range may have moved recently.

How an IP behaves: static, rotating, dedicated and shared

Static IP: the same address for the whole plan. ISP proxies are static.
Rotating IP: a new address from a pool between requests. Residential and mobile proxies work this way.
Sticky session: a rotating pool that keeps one IP for a set time, long enough for a login or a checkout. A sticky session is not a static IP: when it ends, the IP can change.
Dedicated IP: used only by you during the plan.
Shared IP: used by several customers at the same time. It costs less, but the IP's history is shared too.

An IP's history, sometimes called its reputation, is what blocklists and databases have recorded about it, such as spam or abuse reports. On a dedicated IP, the history built during your plan is your own.

What a proxy carries: HTTP, SOCKS5, TCP and UDP

TCP and UDP

Internet traffic travels over two main transports. TCP opens a connection, confirms that every packet arrives and resends the ones that do not: web pages, APIs and email use it. UDP sends packets without a connection or confirmation, which is faster and suits traffic where timing matters more than every packet: voice and video calls, online games, DNS lookups and HTTP/3.

HTTP and HTTPS proxies

An HTTP proxy handles web traffic. For an HTTPS site, the client asks the proxy to open a tunnel and the encrypted traffic passes through it; the proxy cannot read it. "HTTPS proxy" can also mean that the connection to the proxy itself is encrypted, as with the NanoIP gateway on port 443. Either way, an HTTP proxy carries TCP only.

SOCKS5

SOCKS5 is a general-purpose proxy protocol. It relays any TCP connection, not only web traffic, and it defines a way to relay UDP, with username and password authentication. Desktop apps, game clients and tools that do not support HTTP proxies usually support SOCKS5. With SOCKS5, the client can also let the proxy resolve domain names (in curl, the socks5h:// scheme), so DNS lookups come from the proxy's location too.

Why UDP support matters

Not every provider relays UDP over SOCKS5. When a proxy does not, apps that need UDP either fail to connect or send their UDP traffic over your own connection, so part of the session comes from a different IP: a call, a game, or a browser's HTTP/3 and WebRTC traffic.

NanoIP ISP proxies relay UDP over SOCKS5 in every location, with nothing to buy or turn on. Not every app sends UDP through a SOCKS5 proxy, so check the app's proxy settings as well.

Speed and limits: bandwidth, traffic, latency and concurrency

Bandwidth is how fast data can move, in megabits per second (Mbps). There are 8 bits in a byte, so 20 Mbps is about 2.5 megabytes per second.
Traffic is how much data moves in total, in gigabytes (GB). Residential and mobile proxies are billed by traffic; ISP proxies are billed per IP, and NanoIP includes unlimited traffic on them.
Latency is how long a request takes to go out and come back, in milliseconds. It grows with the distance between you, the proxy and the website.
Concurrency is how many connections run at the same time.

The ISP proxy buying guide shows how bandwidth, traffic and the other plan limits change what an IP really costs.

Authentication: username and password, or IP whitelist

A proxy needs to know a connection is yours. With username and password authentication, the credentials travel with each connection, so the proxy works from any device and network. With an IP whitelist, the proxy accepts connections from addresses you register in advance, and stops working when your own IP changes. NanoIP uses username and password authentication only.

How these terms apply to NanoIP proxies

Residential proxies: residential IPs from home broadband, rotating or sticky for 1 to 120 minutes, billed by traffic.
Mobile proxies: 4G and 5G carrier IPs, rotating or sticky, billed by traffic.
ISP proxies: static, dedicated and native IPs registered with local ISPs, with HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5, UDP, 20 Mbps and unlimited traffic.

All three connect with a username and password. The NanoIP proxies overview explains which one fits which work.

Frequently asked questions

Is a native IP the same as a residential IP?

No. "Native" describes location: the IP is registered and used in the same country. "Residential" describes the type of network: home broadband. An IP can be native without being residential; NanoIP ISP proxies, for example, are native IPs of the ISP type.

How do I find an IP's ASN?

Look the IP up in an IP database such as ipinfo.io. The org field starts with the ASN, followed by the name of the network that owns it.

Do I need UDP on a proxy?

Only if your apps use it: voice and video calls, online games, or browsers using HTTP/3. Web pages and APIs work over TCP, which every proxy carries.