Exit node
The final address in a proxy chain — the one the destination actually sees and records.
The exit node is the last hop before the destination. Its address is what the target server logs, what geolocation databases resolve, and what any block ultimately applies to.
#Why the distinction matters
You connect to a provider’s gateway, but the gateway is not what the destination sees. Between them may be several internal hops. When a provider advertises a country, they mean the exit node is in that country — the gateway you dial may be somewhere else entirely.
#Checking it
The only reliable way to know your exit address is to ask a service that echoes it back. That is exactly what a proxy checker does: it opens a real connection through your proxy and reports the address the far end observed.
#One request is one sample
Checking once tells you about that exit node at that moment. On a rotating endpoint the next request may leave from somewhere else entirely, so a single check is a diagnostic, not a measurement of the pool.
#One observation is not a property
Checking your address through a rotating endpoint tells you which exit served that one request. It does not describe the pool, and repeating the check gives a different answer. Three habits follow from this.
- Record the address with the result when a request fails. Without it you cannot tell a bad exit from a bad target.
- Do not conclude a country is wrong from one sample. Draw several before deciding.
- Do not treat a working exit as reserved. Unless you requested a sticky session, the next request may use another.
#Capturing the exit with the response
curl -x http://user:[email protected]:8000 -s \
-w " exit=%{remote_ip} code=%{http_code}\n" \
-o /dev/null https://example.com/Note that remote_ip reports the address curl connected to, which is the gateway, not the exit. To learn the exit you must ask the destination side, so pair the request with a call to an address-reporting service inside the same session.