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 Documentation for this article will be maintained at 


https://quotaguard.github.io/qg-docs/quickstart-ruby 


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the most recent and updated documentation.

With every QuotaGuard Static plan, you have the option of using our HTTP
or SOCKS5 proxies. 

This article outlines the differences and what factors should influence
your decision between the two proxies.

HTTP vs SOCKS comparison

The majority of our customers use our HTTP proxy. This allows you to
route any HTTP calls via our proxy - including secure requests over
HTTPS. 

HTTP proxies are natively supported in most of the common programming
languages, and HTTP client libraries, so it is easy to integrate with
your applications. 

SOCKS proxies are a little bit more versatile as they operate at a lower
level than HTTP.  

SOCKS proxies can proxy TCP connections to arbitrary IP addresses. This
allows you to proxy higher level protocol interactions like FTP or
LDAP. 

SOCKS is also supported at the socket level in a lot of the major
languages. However, most client libraries do not natively support
it, which makes it a bit harder to integrate easily in to your
application(s).

Due to the ease of integration, if you are accessing an HTTP or HTTPS
API, you should probably use our HTTP proxy. 

If you are using a different protocol, then we recommend that you should
switch to using SOCKS proxies.

These are some of the more common use cases that we see for each type of
proxy:

Common HTTP Use Cases


Common SOCKS Use Cases


Accessing an HTTP API


Accessing an MySQL database


Accessing an HTTPS API

Accessing an LDAP service



Transferring files via Secure FTP


Please let us know if you still have questions about which proxy to
chose for your use case. Our customer support contact information is
below and we'd love to help you out with finalizing this crucial
decision.

If you have questions, or if this solution doesn’t work or fit your use case, please reach out to us at Support so we can help figure it out with you.


Working with sensitive data, like HIPAA, Financial, or Personally Identifiable Information (PII)? 
    Then you will want to check out our QuotaGuard Shield solution, it's the same as QuotaGuard Static, but with stronger end to end security for your requests. We can also help migrate current Static customers to Shield for free, just reach out to us at Support to request assistance.