Glossary · Networking
IP reputation
IP reputation is the assessment that websites, mail servers and security services attach to an IP address or range — based on its observed history of spam, attacks or automated traffic and on what kind of network it belongs to — and use to decide whether to accept, challenge, slow down or refuse its traffic.
Reviewed 30 Oct 2026
What feeds an address's reputation
- Shared lists. Blocklists and allowlists of addresses, often distributed over DNS; RFC 5782 documents how these DNS-based lists are structured and queried.
- Network type. The ASN shows whether an address belongs to a hosting provider, a consumer ISP or a mobile carrier.
- Neighbours. Many systems score a whole subnet, so one noisy address can affect its range.
- Behaviour. The request rate, error rate and patterns a site has seen from the address itself.
Reputation by proxy type
| Exit type | How reputation tends to work |
|---|---|
| Datacenter | Classified by network alone; history matters less than the hosting label |
| Residential and mobile | Judged per address and behaviour; shared with ordinary users of the network |
| Dedicated | Shaped by your own traffic from the day it is assigned |
Checking and protecting it
Query public DNS blocklists for an exit, and above all measure results on the pages you need. Keep request rates modest, honour 429s and avoid retry storms: reputation is earned per address, and on a pool it is earned for everyone. Investigating the reputation of hostile infrastructure is its own discipline, covered under threat intelligence.
FAQ
Questions
Something not covered? Write to contact@arcproxies.io.
How can I check an IP address's reputation?
Look it up in public DNS-based blocklists and in threat-intelligence services, and check its ASN to see what kind of network it belongs to. The most useful test is practical: how the sites you care about respond to it.
Can a residential IP have a bad reputation?
Yes. A home address can be listed after malware on a device sent spam, and addresses are reassigned between subscribers over time. Residential addresses are judged more cautiously than hosting ones, not exempt.
How long does a bad IP reputation last?
It depends on the list or system: some entries expire after a quiet period, others need a delisting request. There is no single rule across the internet.
Does ARC guarantee clean IP addresses?
No provider can vouch for the full history of every address. ARC does not publish reputation scores; test exits against your own targets, and use a dedicated static IP where you want reputation to depend only on your traffic.
Sources & review
Last reviewed by the ARC Proxies team. Prices are read from the live catalog at build time.
In practice