The world is unfortunately running rather short of IP addresses? Well it’s true, the escalating numbers of websites, servers and just about anything online that needs an IP address is putting a lot of strain on the available addresses. Some estimates suggest that there are about 14% of the avilable addresses left online and falling fast. Don’t worry though there’s a new system called IPV6 on the horizon which will solve this problem. We are all defined to some extent by our IP address, what we can see, what we can do and even to what extent out governments monitor us online.
The IP address you have is linked to your location, so if you connect through a UK ISP, you’ll have a UK address. If your ISP is in Berlin then you’ll have a German IP address and so on. This is important as a lot of what we can do online is actually governed by this fact. Let’s take something like the BBC Iplayer for instance, a wonderful media site run by the BBC but unfortunately only available to those surfing from a UK IP address. Hulu is another example of such a site so if don’t have a US IP address forget trying to access it.
Every media site on the web, restricts access based on some restrictions usually IP address. It’s also used to do somethign called Price Discrimination, the practice of splitting the price you charge different people in order maximise profits. For instance you’ll someone like Napster charging different prices to it’s customer depending on where they are. This is all calculated based on your IP address. the process is known as geotargeting.
Proxies are servers that sit between you and the web site you are visiting, to obscure your real IP address. When you visit a web site it doesn’t see your IP address just the proxy. Usually this is used for privacy issues but it does have an added benefit if you want to watch content online that is blocked to your current IP address. That is why I have to connect through a UK proxy when I’m working outside Britain so I can watch things like the BBC and ITV. A German living in America would need to use a German proxy to access media sites in his homeland.
The market for these proxies are growing, some people search around for free ones but it is a time consuming job and ultimately a frustrating one. 99% of the free servers are so overloaded that they fall over very quickly and it’s normally impossible to stream any video content over these servers. They are out there, but its extremely time consuming and the search never ends.
If you look for a provider make sure you aren’t charged by country, the best proxy providers charge a single fee for access to a range of servers. This can be very useful if you want to get access to all the content the internet has to offer.
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