Our most loyal customers are loyal to one and only one thing, their steady and speedy, static Fresh/Private IP Address. These Fresh/Private and static IP Addresses are from ranges that are handpicked by our team while renting/acquiring, for their exact match of geolocation across e-commerce sites like eBay, PayPal, Amazon, Etsy, and social media sites like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and the rest. Since these are very high quality IPs for managing steady accounts on such sites for a long period of time, our customers tend to keep them for a very long time, and their account stays safe and trusted as long as they can access it from the IP they purchased from us.
Now what if, a situation arises, where we can not retain the static IP Addresses assigned to our customers? And what if it’s not just one, but over 1500 customers with over 2000 IPs? It’s simple. We COULD assign them a new IP Address, but doing so might trigger suspicion on their accounts, and those customers will definitely never trust us again for a static IP Address. Other than the revenues that might be lost, we also lose the faith of our customers in our ability to give them a safe and steady Fresh/Private static IP Address to manage their accounts.
We were forced to deal with this situation very recently, when one of our biggest IP providers, QuadraNet, was acquired by EdgeCentre, a similar but larger business. After the acquisition, EdgeCentre decided to phase out all QuadraNet-assigned IPs and servers-—impacting 4 locations, 4,000+ IPs, and 1,500+ customers.
First migration – December, 2024
A part of the migration happened in December, 2024, when our LA server was completely taken offline and we had no choice but to give new IPs to over 600+ customers. Back then, we were completely taken by surprise by this situation and had very little time to prepare for alternative solutions. That was already a shock, dissatisfaction and a little dent in our revenue, to have taken away IPs from so many loyal and long term customers. But still, we were fine, since we had 3 locations, that we thought were safe and were going to continue functioning longer term without issues.
Hiccups along the way
Since the first migration, the other 3 locations slowly started having issues. Some of our IP ranges would stop working, or would be taken away forcefully, from time to time, forcing us to move our customers to new IPs and loosing their trust along the way. We could only pray until the next time another range was taken away from us. Months of slow torture to us and our customers.
Second wave of migrations
Then came the real shocking moment, in March 2025, when we were communicated that ALL of our IPs and servers in ALL 3 locations would be going away. We were not given much information on how to retain our servers or IPs, in case we wanted. It was as simple as – we would be forced to be migrated to new providers in the same region, and some new names were flaunted, without much confirmation from any of them, about the date of the migrations, or the ability to keep IP ranges.
This time around though, in April 2025, when it came to migrating the rest of the 3 locations, in Dallas, Miami and Chicago, we did have time to prepare, but we had very little information and direction given to us by the provider on how we could keep our servers and IPs intact, without causing much downtime or losing the entire IP ranges assigned to our customers.
Our Miami server was moving to HiVelocity and they assured to keep our server and the IPs intact. Just 3-days before the final migration was about to happen, we were informed that the IPs will be gone forever.
Our Dallas server was moving to ColoCrossing and they confirmed the migration will be quick and the IPs will stay intact.
Lately we found out that the Chicago server was moving to Quick Packet after juggling through a few provider, and they had no idea when was this migration about to happen or if they will be able to retain our IPs or not.
Dallas Server, 48 hours straight downtime
Even with downtime, we AT LEAST retained the IPs intact, which literally means, we kept the revenues intact for this server. The colo-crossing provider is also the owner of the IPs, so we no longer have to worry about the IPs being taken away for this server. Still, we are in talks with them to get entire IP ranges under a longer term contract and further solidify our ownership of these ranges.
Act 5: Chicago and Miami server, 15 minutes of downtime, and a new way out!
The Dallas and Miami servers posed a greater challenge: 1,300 active IPs, 1,000+ customers, and warnings that all IPs would be lost including the main server IP as well, where the customers actually connect to for their proxy/VPN connection. Confusion over post-migration ownership worsened the crisis.
We were told from all sides that we won’t be able to retain our current IPs as is, and we would be either shifted to new IP ranges OR there MIGHT be a small chance of keeping the IPs, but no guarantees. We were also informed this may take days if not weeks to negotiate those ranges and server, and much higher costs to be able to retain the server, risking multiple days of downtime.
Back then, looking at the dire picture of losing the IPs and eventually the customers using these IPs, we accepted the situation, and started sending out emails to customers who would be affected by the IP change.
In the middle of all that doom and gloom, an idea popped up in our current CEO (Sagar Chandarana: https://br.linkedin.com/in/sagarchandarana)’s mind, almost like a Godly inspiration, “What if, there was a way?”. What if, the entire IP ranges that were owned by QuadraNet earlier, could be either bought or rented by us directly, without having to worrying about the middlemen (the server providers) and their bullshit bureaucracies? We were already renting out ranges directly and hosting them on our own using BGP, instead of renting them directly via the server. What if, we can get the entire ranges, including the main server IP, and add them to our current BGP network, and modify our stack so that an external BGP IP, which used to be the old main server IP, can also receive incoming VPN and Proxy connections?
Our COO (Rushi Adhia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rushiadhia/) was given the task to hunt down those owners of the ranges, and reach out to them on multiple social media platforms AND via email/support channels of the providers. We sent out multiple invites, emails, private messages and tickets to EdgeCentre, HiVelocity (other providers, too), and voila! Someone (Earnie, https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernie-q-593812b8/) heard our prayers at HostPapa (which is also ColoCrossing, our Dallas server provider), and reached out back to us asking if we want to get those ranges directly from them. YESS! THAT WAS IT! That was our clear and very elegant way out of this situation.
We negotiated those exact ranges with HostPapa, We accelerated changes in our tech stack to accommodate those new ranges, and also reached out to our BGP partners to notify them about incoming flood of new ranges and IPs. With the help of all partners and our internal team which stayed awake even during that weekend to modify, test and deploy our stack for the upcoming migration. On the 29th of April, the existing servers from QuadraNet were scheduled to be turned off and the IPs were being removed. That same day, very early morning, we were able to import all these ranges on to our new network, and start announcing BGP ranges on our own servers with the existing server IP also allowing incoming connections.
Eureka! Since the preparations were all made in advance, and as team was very vigilant about the tiniest detail, this last migration caused less than 15 minutes of downtime on the first server, and only 30 seconds of downtime on the other! While keeping, all the IP ranges and the customers on them intact.
For many of these customers, it was also a roller coaster ride, since earlier we communicated that their IPs would be taken away, and then, we actually were able to keep the IPs by the will of God somehow.
Conclusion
While this whole story over the entire year caused us a lot of stress and somewhat hurtful experiences to our customers, we are now more resilient as a proxy provider. Our network of IPs are longer term acquired, and our customers have stable and long-term guaranteed static IP address for their valuable business and e-commerce accounts. We, as a team, are further more tightly integrated and everyone understands better how valuable the customer experience is in the end.
We were also very conscious during the whole period how each of the customer would feel. If they experience extended downtime, or if their IP is taken away entirely. To all of them, we offered free IP upgrades to a better quality IP, a free month of service for their affected IP, and also credits to switch to a better/new plan. We were communicative during this whole time and our support team was very empathetic to their issues, offering solutions in any form convenient to the customer.
We realized, that as a smaller team, and a smaller company, we can actually provide much better quality of service, IP addresses and support. All our Fresh/Private and Static Residential IPs are not shared with the rest of the pool, each customer gets a unique IP that stays with them as long as they desire, and we will do everything in our power to retain these IPs, so that their valuable accounts remain safe and secure.
