How Many IPs a Chicago Mobile Proxy Rotates Through

How many IPs do I get is one of the first questions we hear, and the honest answer starts with where the addresses come from. A Chicago Proxies line is one SIM on one carrier, and every address it will ever have is drawn from that carrier's regional pool for the Chicago area. The pool is large, it is shared with the public, it is not ours, and it hands out repeats. This article explains the mechanics, why a repeat is not a fault, and how to measure the number for yourself on your own line rather than take anyone's word for it.

Where the addresses come from

When the modem in our rack registers on the network, the carrier's gateway for the region assigns it a public address from a block reserved for that gateway. The block is the carrier's property and serves every subscriber in the area, so the address you get is one of a pool that also serves ordinary phones. When you rotate, the device drops the session and registers again, and the gateway assigns another address from the same block. Nothing about this is under our control or yours beyond the moment of asking.

This is the same for AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, though each carrier organises its gateways differently and some hand out a wider spread than others. The address will always be Chicago-area and always the carrier's, which is the part that matters for how sites treat it.

Why repeats are normal

A regional pool is big but finite, and the gateway allocates from it in whatever order suits the carrier, not at random across the whole block. In practice a line that rotates often will see the same address come back now and then, sometimes within a few rotations. That is not a sign that the pool is small or that the line is broken; it is how carrier address allocation works, and a real phone reconnecting all day would see the same pattern.

Because addresses are shared through carrier-grade NAT, a repeat also does not mean you were the only one on that address in the meantime. Other subscribers were. From a website's point of view, the address was busy the whole time with ordinary traffic, and your return to it is one more phone among many.

What pool size means for a dedicated line

On a shared pool product, the number of IPs is a marketing figure for the whole fleet. On a dedicated line it is a property of one SIM on one carrier in one metro, and it is only knowable by measurement. Two lines on the same carrier in the same rack can see different spreads depending on which gateway they attach to. The number also moves over time as the carrier adds or re-arranges blocks.

What you can rely on is unlimited rotation: you may ask for a new address as often as you want, with no wait, from the dashboard, the rotation link, the API or a timer. How many distinct addresses that yields over a day is something you measure, and the measurement is more useful than any figure we could print.

Measuring it on your own line

You can do this with a shell script and curl, or in Python, in a few lines. The method matters more than the tool.

1. Buy a Chicago line; a day plan at $5 is enough for a proper measurement.
2. Write a small loop that calls your rotation link, waits for the line to come back, fetches an IP lookup page through the proxy, and appends the address with a timestamp to a file.
3. Run it at a sensible pace, for example once every few minutes, for a full day. There is no limit on rotations, but a few minutes apart gives the carrier time to settle.
4. Count the distinct addresses in the file and note how often repeats occur and how far apart they are.
5. Look at the geolocation of a sample of them; expect Chicago or a suburb for all, and Illinois for all.
6. Repeat on a different carrier if you want to compare; stock permitting, you can move the plan or buy a second line.

Reading the result

If you need many distinct addresses in a short time, the measured number tells you whether one line is enough or whether you should run two or three on different carriers. If you need one address that stays put, the number barely matters; what matters is that sticky mode holds the address for as long as the carrier keeps the session, which is often hours and sometimes days.

Treat the count as a snapshot. The carrier can change its allocation next month, and it can change the address on your line on its own after a long idle. Read the address at the start of each session instead of assuming.

• Sticky: keep the address until the carrier changes it or you ask.
• Dashboard: one click for a new address.
• Rotation link: a URL you can call from any script or tool.
• API: for building rotation into your own software.
• Timer: a new address every N minutes, set in the dashboard.

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