Opressive Regimes Make Good Proxy Servers

I recently had the need a large number of proxy servers for a project. A proxy server is a server that will forward your web traffic requests. So if you want to get http://www.tententwo.com you send that url to the proxy server, it collects the page and hands back the result. Mostly they are used to disguise identity as it masks the IP address (unique number of a computer on the Internet) of the client computer from the that of the web server.

There are many sites out there that are dedicated to creating lists of proxy servers. They rate the servers based on response time and availability. I have an alternate method for selecting fast and reliable proxy servers that goes like this.

Cross reference the countries with the most oppressive regimes with those with the most Internet use. Then eliminate countries where people are shooting one another and blowing stuff up.

According to those cranks at Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders these are the current top 10 shittiest places to be. I cross referenced these countries with net usage stats from internetworldstats.com.

Country	% population using the net
Sudan	7.8%(2.8m)
North Korea	0%
Burma	0.5% (300k)
China	10%(132m)
Saudi Arabia	10.6%(2.54m)
Libya	3.3%(205k)
Pakistan	7.2%(12m)
Turkmenistan	0.5%(36k)
Zimbabwe	8.1%(1m)
Equatorial Guinea	0.5%(5k)

Eliminating the countries with no, or bad infrastructure we get:

Country	% population using the net
China	10%(132m)
Saudi Arabia	10.6%(2.54m)
Sudan	7.8%(2.8m)
Pakistan	7.2%(12m)

Eliminate the Sudan because of all the shooting and blowing shit up (I assume they are bound to accidently destroy some telecom assets while gunning for particularly fleet footed children):

Country	% population using the net
China	10%(132m)
Saudi Arabia	10.6%(2.54m)
Pakistan	7.2%(12m)

There you go, the best proxy servers to be found in China or Saudi Arabia.

19 February 2007 | Tech | Comments