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Key Concepts

MyOwnProxy is built around a small set of core concepts. Understanding how they relate to each other makes the rest of the platform easier to use.

Gateway

A Gateway is the entry point used to access proxy traffic.

Your applications connect to a Gateway using SOCKS5. The Gateway then routes traffic through one of the Nodes that is eligible for the selected Pool.

Gateways run on infrastructure controlled by you.

A Node is assigned to a Gateway for connectivity and management, while Pools determine which Nodes can serve traffic for a Proxy.

Node

A Node provides the Internet exit connection for proxy traffic.

Nodes run on customer-controlled hardware and connect automatically to MyOwnProxy after they have been prepared and started.

Each Node is assigned to a Gateway.

A Node can be included in a Pool to serve proxy traffic.

Proxy

A Proxy defines how a group of Nodes is exposed for proxy use.

MyOwnProxy is designed primarily around Pool-based proxy access.

A Proxy is associated with a Pool of Nodes that may be selected to serve traffic.

Pool

A Pool is the set of Nodes that are available to serve traffic for a Proxy.

Managing a customer-created Pool mainly means managing its Node membership.

Each Gateway also has a system-managed Pool named pool-all. MyOwnProxy automatically keeps pool-all populated with the Nodes assigned to that Gateway. It is the only Pool whose membership is maintained automatically; customer-created Pools require manual membership changes.

When an application connects through a Pool, MyOwnProxy selects an eligible Node according to the current selection criteria.

Pools make it possible to operate multiple exit Nodes without requiring the application to select a specific Node for every connection.

Direct Node access

Although MyOwnProxy is designed around Pools, you can also connect through a specific Node when your use case requires a particular exit Node.

Both Pool access and direct Node access use SOCKS5.

Proxy Credential

A Proxy Credential is used to authenticate SOCKS5 connections.

MyOwnProxy supports two credential scopes:

  • Temporary credentials are associated with a Gateway.
  • Persistent credentials are associated with the Customer.

Credentials can be created, rotated, revoked, and configured with expiration where applicable.

Customer

A Customer represents an organization using MyOwnProxy.

Customer resources, users, configuration, and Proxy Credentials are isolated from those belonging to other customers.

User roles

Customer users have one of two roles:

  • ADMIN users can manage customer resources and perform the customer-facing administrative actions available in MyOwnProxy.
  • VIEWER users have read-only access on supported pages. They cannot access every customer-facing feature; current exceptions include Users and Proxy Credentials.

Some sensitive operations are restricted to MyOwnProxy administrators.

See Roles and Permissions for the current capability summary.

How the concepts fit together

A typical MyOwnProxy environment looks like this:

Customer
  |
  +-- Gateway
  |     |
  |     +-- Node A
  |     +-- Node B
  |     +-- Node C
  |
  +-- Proxy
        |
        +-- Pool
              |
              +-- Node A
              +-- Node B
              +-- Node C

Applications normally connect to the Proxy through the Pool using SOCKS5 and Proxy Credentials.