SOCKS5 Proxy

SOCKS5 is a proxy protocol that operates at a lower level than HTTP proxies, supporting any type of network traffic including TCP and UDP. Unlike HTTP proxies that only handle web traffic, SOCKS5 can be used for torrents, gaming, VoIP, and any other protocol.

SOCKS5 vs HTTP proxy:
- SOCKS5 is protocol-agnostic
- HTTP proxy can inspect and modify HTTP headers
- SOCKS5 supports authentication and UDP relay
- SOCKS5 is typically faster for non-HTTP traffic

How it works

The SOCKS5 protocol (RFC 1928) sits at the session layer. The client opens a TCP connection to the SOCKS5 server, authenticates, and sends a CONNECT request naming the destination host and port. The server opens that downstream connection and from then on relays bytes blindly in both directions. Because it does not parse the payload, SOCKS5 works for anything that runs over TCP or UDP: HTTPS, raw TCP, IRC, MQTT, gRPC, even custom binary protocols.

In practice you use SOCKS5 when an HTTP proxy is not enough: a desktop app that does not honour HTTP_PROXY, a scraper that needs to keep a long-lived raw socket open, a bot that calls a binary API, or any client that wants UDP relay. Murphy supports SOCKS5 on the same residential and ISP pools as HTTP, with the same authentication scheme. Switch the protocol on the client; everything else stays identical.