Question 1

How do I change the number of Tor instances in the rotating proxy?

Accepted Answer

Set the 'tors' environment variable when running the Docker container, for example, use '--env tors=50' to increase to 50 Tor instances, as shown in the usage example in the README.

Question 2

Rotating Tor proxy vs paid residential proxies: which is better for scraping?

Accepted Answer

This project uses free Tor networks, offering anonymity but with slower speeds and less reliability; paid residential proxies provide faster, more stable IPs better for high-volume scraping, though at a cost.

Question 3

How can I monitor the proxy performance in real-time?

Accepted Answer

Access the built-in HAProxy stats page by navigating to http://127.0.0.1:4444/haproxy?stats after starting the container, as detailed in the README's monitoring section.

Question 4

Does this proxy support HTTPS scraping or only HTTP?

Accepted Answer

It supports HTTPS through the HTTP proxy protocol; clients can use it for HTTPS requests, but performance may be impacted by Tor's encryption layers, as implied by the use of Polipo for translation.

Question 5

Can I use this with Python requests library for web scraping?

Accepted Answer

Yes, configure the Python requests library to use the HTTP proxy at 127.0.0.1:5566, but note that Tor's slow speeds might require timeouts or retry logic for reliable scraping.

Question 6

Is there a way to add authentication to the proxy endpoints?

Accepted Answer

The README does not mention authentication features; users would need to modify the HAProxy configuration manually, which adds complexity and is not covered in the documentation.

Question 7

How often does the IP address rotate in this setup?

Accepted Answer

IP rotation depends on HAProxy's load-balancing across Tor instances; each request can get a different IP, but the README doesn't specify rotation intervals, so it's request-based rather than time-based.

rotating-proxy

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