Did you start researching various methods of pulling data from the internet? If you did, there is some ground to cover before you can completely understand how things work. Terms such as rotating and sticky sessions, web scraping, and backconnect proxies don’t mean a lot to anyone who hears of them for the first time.
As with everything in business, you need access to accurate and relevant information to make the right decision. Fortunately, you’ve stumbled upon the right kind of article for you. Here is everything you need to know about rotating and sticky sessions, which one to choose, and how backconnect proxies can help.
Table of Contents
What is a scraping session?
Almost all sites, online apps, and services store a dataset on their users. For instance, your favorite streaming platform remembers your login information and your watch history. In order to do that, online apps and sites use what is called a web session.
So every time you go online and use an app or website, the information about your interactions is stored on a server. That stored information is what we call a web session. It also tells us how much time is needed to complete a certain action in an app or on a website. There is a unique web session for every user.
With this in mind, a scraping session stands for information generated through one interaction between a scraping bot and a target website. What is the role of scraping sessions? Could scraping operations be completed without them?
The role of scraping sessions
The common goal for many website owners is to deliver an outstanding browsing experience. Website loading speeds are also a ranking factor that motivates owners to focus on loading speeds even more. But, if there are too many people browsing the website, it will slow down. Under too much load, it can even crash and become unable to load.
Now imagine what can happen when thousands of companies worldwide target the same site for web scraping. It will most definitely slow down. In order to prevent it, site admins deploy various measures. These are called anti-scraping measures, and their primary purpose is to keep bots off websites.
This is where scraping sessions come in. Their primary purpose is to facilitate scraping and help scrape bots bypass these defenses. You can send multiple requests through scraping sessions, scrape data parallelly, and access sites behind login walls. Now let’s see what makes rotating and sticky sessions unique.
Rotating sessions
Using one IP address to scrape data from multiple pages will most definitely result in CAPTCHAs, if not a ban. In order to avoid this, companies opt for using rotating proxies. They can send multiple requests from different IP addresses and complete their scraping operation with rotating proxies.
Rotating sessions are unique for every IP. They change automatically with a new IP. It makes it borderline impossible for anti-scraping measures to detect bots. Thanks to rotating proxies and sessions, the traffic appears completely organic.
Pros
- Increased flexibility;
- The perfect method for scraping tasks with no login requirements.
Cons
- Can’t help with dynamic layout changes.
Sticky sessions
With sticky sessions, the situation is quite the opposite of the one we have with rotating sessions. The session here is persistent, meaning that IP doesn’t change, and the session lasts significantly longer. Sticky sessions can last even for half an hour.
Unlike rotating sessions used for scraping multiple websites and web pages simultaneously, sticky sessions are mainly used for scraping all data from a set of websites. They are even used for account management (e.g. social media accounts & e-commerce platforms).
Pros
- Great stability and reliability;
- Perfect solution for the management of online accounts.
Cons
- Narrow use case.
How backconnect proxies help with both types
As you can see, rotating and sticky sessions have unique use cases. However, both types of sessions can benefit from backconnect proxies in terms of operational stability and avoiding detection. Backconnect proxies work as a gateway between you and rotating or sticky proxies. To learn more about backconnect proxies, go to the blog article.
Backconnect proxies streamline both rotating and sticky sessions-based operations. For instance, if you are using rotating sessions, the backconnect proxy can fetch IPs from the pool for you automatically, and you can just enter one address in your script to complete the operation.
In terms of sticky sessions, backconnect proxies can help you use multiple sticky IP addresses. All you have to do is change the session ID or port number, and you are set.
Conclusion
Now that you know what rotating and sticking sessions are, you can make an informed decision. In any case, backconnect proxies can help you streamline your operation and make it furthermore ban- and block-proof.
