In this guide I will explain to you What is cloudflare And why this company is so important on the current Internet. I show you the different functions that its platform performs and how website benefits website to hire their services. In addition, I explain why, when they block Cloudflare or their infrastructure falls, so many websites stop working, some of them very important. We start!
What exactly is Cloudflare?
In a strict sense, Cloudflare is a company that provides Internet services To many other companies. However, when this term is used, it also refers to the platform itself. Therefore, we can say that, in addition to the name of the company, Cloudflare is a CDNthe acronym for Content distribution network. In Spanish we translate it as Content distribution network.
To understand exactly what he does, think of the following example. Imagine you want to access a web page housed in a server that is far from where you are. Although it may seem that every internet is simply in the cloud, the truth is that the physical distances between computers influence the transfer speed. Yes You connect to the Internet from Spainbut The server is in Australiaeverything will load much more than if the server were in your own country.
When websites or Internet services are globalized, that is, they seek to attract traffic from all over the world, what they usually do is hire content distribution networks. And what exactly do they do? Companies like Cloudflare They have servers distributed throughout the world. They create copies in cache of the content on the original server and distributed to users according to their origin.
Think again in the previous example. Cloudflare copy the content of the Australian server and distributes it in servers that are all over the world. If you connect From SpainCloudflare will serve the content, for example, from a server located in France, making the load much faster. This is just a hypothetical situation, but the important thing is that you stay with the main idea: Cloudflare “brings” the content of distant servers To your position to increase the load speed of websites and applications.
But there is even more. Another thing that cloudflare is to protect the Internet platforms from unexpected attacks or traffic peaks. How do you do it? Let's continue with the previous example. Imagine that this website I was talking about Start receiving many visits from Spain. The peak is so great that the server that is in charge of this region presents performance problems. Only users who use that server will notice it. If someone connects from another part of the world, Cloudflare will serve the content from a different server and there will be no performance problems for him.
Therefore, Cloudflare not only provides a network of servers with copies of each site or service to increase the speed and approach the contents to the users, but also provides protection when decentralizing servers. If a website depends on a single server and this is saturated or attacked, everyone will stop accessing. Instead, with Cloudflare, only a small region of the world will be affected.
The cloudflare paradox: a decentralized internet, but focused on a single company
With Cloudflare there is an interesting paradox. As I have explained to you, this platform protects websites and the Internet services from attacks, errors in servers and sudden traffic peaks. Even if the original server stops working, Cloudflare copies will remain there so that everyone access them. However, this decentralized internet sits on the infrastructure of a single companysomething that actually centralizes network services.
To understand why so many pages and applications fail when Cloudflare stops working, it is important to remember something: this is the most used CDN in the world. It is true that it is not the only one, but it is the one that chooses countless pages, applications and Internet platforms. The paradox is that, although this company decentralizes access to these services, at the same time is centralizing them in one place: Cloudflare infrastructure.
Although it is extremely reliable, the Cloudflare distribution network can also fail. Due to its market share, if your infrastructure falls, countless services that use the Internet to work “turn off”. In addition, as this company provides other services, such as protection against service denial attacks, many servers are unprotected.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhvmx3fhtwu
Cloudflare infrastructure is robust. Now, that I experience problems is not the only reason why you could stop accessing this distribution network and, as a consequence, to a long list of web and app services. It is also possible that A judge decides to block access to cloudflare. In this case, what happens is that they pay fair for sinners. Is What happened in Austria A while ago, also in Italy And more Recently in Spain.
In the latter case, it is usually the operator who is in charge of Block the access of certain IP addresses that are owned by Cloudflare. Although the intention is to fight against piracy, not allowing users to access this platform involves eliminating access to countless services.
Because? Because Many of the IP addresses are shared And they not only direct to websites where content protected by copyright is distributed, but to legitimate platforms that users use in their day to day.
And you, what do you think of the cloudflare situation? Leave me your comment below. We read!
