The Illinois Carrier Pool: How Deep One Line Goes

Proxy sellers like to quote the size of their pools, and the numbers are often large and rarely useful. For a dedicated line the honest question is different: when I rotate this one SIM, how many distinct addresses can it reach, and how often will I see the same one twice? This guide explains where an Illinois line's addresses come from, why the pool is the carrier's and not ours, what governs how deep it feels in practice, and how to measure it on your own line in an afternoon rather than trusting anyone's figure, including ours.

Whose pool it is

An Illinois Proxies line is one SIM in one device in Chicago. Each time the device re-registers or re-establishes its data session, the carrier's regional gateway hands it a public address from the block that gateway controls. We do not own those addresses, we do not pick them, and we cannot add to them. The pool is AT&T's, T-Mobile's or Verizon's Illinois gateway range, and your line draws from it exactly as a subscriber's phone would.

This is why we decline to publish a pool size. The number would describe the carrier's block, which is public information anyone can look up, and it would say nothing about how your particular line behaves across a day of rotations.

What actually governs depth

Three things decide how many distinct addresses a line sees. The first is the size of the gateway block the device happens to be attached to, which differs by carrier and by the gateway the SIM is routed through. The second is the carrier's allocation behaviour: some gateways hand out addresses in a wide spread, others tend to return a recently used address to the same session. The third is time of day, because a gateway under heavy load has fewer idle addresses to assign.

Repeats are therefore normal. On a quiet morning a line might see many different addresses across a run of rotations; in the evening the same line may land on one it had an hour earlier. The carrier can also change an address without a rotation request from you.

Measuring depth on your own line

A measurement you make yourself beats any claim. The procedure is simple and runs comfortably within an hourly plan.

The result is a number that belongs to your line, your carrier and that time of day. Repeat it at a different hour before drawing a conclusion, and expect the two runs to differ.

1. From the dashboard at il.illinoisproxies.com, copy the line's rotation link.
2. Write a short loop that calls the rotation link, waits for the line to come back, fetches a page that returns your public address through the proxy, and appends the address to a file.
3. Run the loop for a fixed number of rotations, for example forty, with a pause between each so the carrier completes the new session.
4. Count the distinct addresses in the file and note how many times each repeated.
5. Record the carrier, the time of day in Central time, and the result, then run again later and compare.

Depth versus consistency

It is worth asking why you want depth at all. For data collection that must not be rate-limited by address, depth is useful, and a timer rotation set in the dashboard spreads requests across the pool automatically. For account work, depth is irrelevant and consistency is everything: the best address is the one you had yesterday, and a line left sticky will hold its address for as long as the carrier keeps the session, often days.

Most of the customers who ask us about pool size turn out to need a sticky line. The ones who genuinely need breadth usually find that the carrier's own regional spread is more than enough once they add a sensible pause between rotations.

Reading a competitor's pool claim

When a provider quotes a very large pool for mobile addresses, ask what the number counts. Often it is the total of every carrier block in the country, which no single line can reach. Sometimes it is the number of devices in a shared fleet, in which case your traffic is mixed with other customers' and the address history is nobody's. A dedicated line trades that headline figure for something more useful: a pool that is the carrier's, an address history that is yours, and a rotation you control.

• Ask whether the figure is addresses one line can reach or addresses across the whole network.
• Ask whether the device is shared with other customers.
• Ask how repeats are handled and whether the carrier can change the address unasked.
• Then measure it yourself for an hour before signing up for a month.

The honest summary

One Illinois line draws from one carrier's Illinois gateway range, shared with real subscribers. Rotations are unlimited and yours to trigger; repeats happen; the carrier has the last word. How deep it feels depends on the carrier, the gateway and the hour, and the only number worth trusting is one you measured on your own line. We would rather give you the method than a figure.

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