What is a Native IP? Is it necessary for e-commerce?

I believe many people involved in cross-border activities encounter IP proxies, such as e-commerce platforms, social media platforms, payment platforms, and more, all of which often perform IP checks. You might also frequently come across some terms: "Native IP" and "Residential IP." What are the differences between these two, and which businesses require their use? Let's dive into it.

What is Native IP？

A Native IP refers to a public IP address assigned to your device by an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or network operator. These IPs typically belong to the local area and are recognized by services or games with regional restrictions.

Native IPs are commonly used in commercial, data center, cloud server, and enterprise network environments due to their direct internet connectivity. However, there is some ambiguity surrounding the term "Native IP" on the internet. Some people confuse it with Residential IP. From the perspective of data centers, a Native IP refers to an IP whose registered country matches the country where the data center is located (essentially, it's a local IP).

Conversely, a Broadcast IP does not match the data center's country, and Residential IPs are not part of the data center IPs.

What is Residential IP?

Residential IPs do not belong to data centers and are typically IP addresses assigned by ISPs to home users. These IP addresses are usually used for personal or household internet activities, such as web browsing, streaming, social media, and other common household network activities.

Residential IPs are often associated with specific geographical locations, so they may be subject to regional restrictions or geographical positioning services. They can be categorized as dynamic or static residential IPs.

How to Choose an IP for e-commerce?

Compared to data center IPs, truly Native IPs are relatively rare because many data center IP pools have undergone changes and registrations over the years.

If your business requires a high level of IP nativeness, it's advisable to use Residential IPs. These IPs are easier to obtain, cost relatively less, and typically have direct cooperation with local ISPs, reducing the chances of IP migration and ensuring a higher level of nativeness.

However, most cross-border platforms do not have strict requirements regarding the use of truly Native IPs since many local IPs are not entirely pure. The most crucial factor is to ensure the exclusivity of the IP. Whether you choose data center IPs or Residential IPs, it's recommended to use dedicated and pure proxies, such as IPFoxy's pure proxies, which cover global dynamic and static pure proxies and ensure that your accounts are not affected by others' activities.

How to Use Proxies

Generally, IP proxies can be used as intermediate nodes. However, if you want to safely use them on major cross-border platforms without triggering security measures and ensure that each account has an exclusive IP, you can integrate them into fingerprint browsers. This is the most common usage among cross-border players. For example, by using IPFoxy's pure proxies, you can integrate them into each browser environment you create with fingerprint browsers. This allows you to manage multiple accounts and ensure a one-account-to-one-IP setup, effectively isolating IPs at the source.

In summary, Native IPs are typically more stable and reliable, while Residential IPs may be subject to ISP policies and geographical restrictions. However, the most crucial factor is to ensure the purity of the proxy you use to guarantee business security. The choice of which type of IP address to use depends on your network requirements and purposes.