# Protocols

The residential gateway speaks HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5 on the same port. The protocol is detected from the client handshake — you do not configure it server-side.

## HTTP / HTTPS

The most widely supported. Both `http://` and `https://` targets work through the same connection.

```bash
# HTTP target
curl -x http://helo_s1a2b3c4d5e-type-res-region-us:PASSWORD@gate.helodata.io:7777 \
     http://example.com

# HTTPS target (TLS to target is end-to-end)
curl -x http://helo_s1a2b3c4d5e-type-res-region-us:PASSWORD@gate.helodata.io:7777 \
     https://example.com
```

For HTTPS targets the client sends `CONNECT example.com:443` to the proxy, which opens a TCP tunnel. helodata never sees the request body.

## SOCKS5

SOCKS5 is required for non-HTTP traffic (raw TCP, some DB clients, custom protocols) and is preferred by some scraping stacks for slightly lower overhead.

```bash
curl --socks5-hostname helo_s1a2b3c4d5e-type-res-region-us:PASSWORD@gate.helodata.io:7777 \
     https://ipv4.icanhazip.com
```

`--socks5-hostname` (not `--socks5`) makes the proxy do the DNS lookup, which is what you want for geo-targeting to work correctly — otherwise the client resolves locally and leaks DNS.

### Python SOCKS5

```python
import requests

USER = "helo_s1a2b3c4d5e-type-res-region-us"
PASS = "PASSWORD"
proxy = f"socks5h://{USER}:{PASS}@gate.helodata.io:7777"

r = requests.get(
    "https://ipv4.icanhazip.com",
    proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy},
    timeout=30,
)
```

Note `socks5h://` (with the `h`) — equivalent to `--socks5-hostname`, forces remote DNS.

### Node.js SOCKS5

```js
import { SocksProxyAgent } from "socks-proxy-agent";
import fetch from "node-fetch";

const agent = new SocksProxyAgent(
  "socks5://helo_s1a2b3c4d5e-type-res-region-us:PASSWORD@gate.helodata.io:7777"
);
const res = await fetch("https://ipv4.icanhazip.com", { agent });
```

## When to prefer which

| Use case                                             | Pick                                                  |
| ---------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- |
| Standard HTTP/HTTPS scraping                         | HTTP/HTTPS                                            |
| Browser automation (Selenium, Playwright, Puppeteer) | HTTP/HTTPS                                            |
| Raw TCP, MQTT, custom protocols                      | SOCKS5                                                |
| Maximum throughput, minimum overhead                 | SOCKS5                                                |
| Easiest debugging                                    | HTTP/HTTPS — works with `mitmproxy`, browser devtools |

## What we do not support

* **SOCKS4 / SOCKS4a** — use SOCKS5
* **HTTP/3 (QUIC)** to the gateway — the target site can still serve HTTP/3 over the tunnel
* **Plain (non-TLS) authentication over the public internet** — credentials are always Base64-encoded by clients, but for sensitive workloads connect to the gateway over TLS (same port `7777`; gateway auto-detects)

## Common pitfalls

* **DNS leak in SOCKS5** — always use `socks5h://` / `--socks5-hostname` so the proxy resolves the target
* **HTTP-only library forced to talk HTTPS** — if your client requires `http://` proxy URL even for HTTPS targets, that's normal; only the target URL is HTTPS
* **`curl` ignoring `HTTPS_PROXY`** — make sure both `HTTP_PROXY` and `HTTPS_PROXY` are set, lowercase variants too on some Unixes


---

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