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Protocols5 min read

SOCKS5 UDP Associate Explained

SOCKS5 UDP relay for DNS and datagram protocols — handshake flow and relevance to HTTP-only scrapers.

SOCKS5 UDP relay for DNS and datagram protocols — handshake flow and relevance to HTTP-only scrapers.

UDP associate

SOCKS5 can relay UDP datagrams via UDP ASSOCIATE command. TCP control connection stays open.

Use cases

  • Custom UDP protocols
  • Some DNS setups
  • Gaming and VoIP

Related: SOCKS4 vs SOCKS5.

Web scraping note

Most HTTP crawlers never need UDP. Prefer HTTP or SOCKS5 TCP for standard pipelines.

Related: HTTP vs SOCKS5.

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