How Cloudflare ruined the Internet

I like BunnyCDN.

There is another project still in development:

EdgeCDN-X is an open source CDN solution built purely on top of k8s and CNCF projects.
github.com/EdgeCDN-X

The project in reddit.

View on Reddit

Lost a lot of money today because of the downtime. Lesson learned, I need to find a better set-up.

JohnnyDoe said:

Is it possible to do without a CDN?
Btw, Bunny keep functioning smoothly.

Should be no issue for me personally. As for some of clients/partners I deal with: Common occurrence I see is they rent a server from the same people that built their websites and for some reason they always slap Cloudfare on it. Totally pointless most of the time.

Also bunny has been rock-solid for a long time from what I've understood. I'm going to look into it right away.

I don't know why, because I'm not that technical, but I've noticed a big change in the accessibility of websites since 2020. Even when running a very expensive set-up earlier this year shit would go offline or be slow every now and then. There must be some theory behind this.

JohnnyDoe said:

without solving puzzles like you’re auditioning for Mensa. Captchas

that’s an anti ddos feature used by the webmasters/website owners.
It’s called Cloudflare turnstile.

Yet I did read some horror stories of their sales department - if you wanna go for an enterprise plan, they can charge you what they want, no transparent pricing.

CF is one of the biggest threats to the free internet, the level of centralization is beyond comprehension, boycott CF, not using them is a virtuous decision

no but is the most comfortable way if you don't want to hire a full time guy!
one of my servers doesn't have cdn... it's nginx + fail2ban and other modules... it's a pain to setup, a pain to handle and a pain to monitor...
of course if one does it daily there are scripts/docker etc to automate it all. Yet a PITA...
I've set it very aggressively, it bans scanners too. Banlist gets huge quickly.
Don't have anything mission critical there, so it's kinda set and forget.
In this server I don't care about huge ddos (have some isp protection). I care that people/bots gets banned as soon as they try to hack me or scan for vulns.
Cloudflare also make it very easy to hide your server IP.
A self hosted cdn with multiple servers... don't even want to think about that 🤣

marioIT said:

A self hosted cdn with multiple servers...

That would be a real PITA… 🤓

marioIT said:

no but is the most comfortable way if you don't want to hire a full time guy!
one of my servers doesn't have cdn... it's nginx + fail2ban and other modules... it's a pain to setup, a pain to handle and a pain to monitor...
of course if one does it daily there are scripts/docker etc to automate it all. Yet a PITA...
I've set it very aggressively, it bans scanners too. Banlist gets huge quickly.
Don't have anything mission critical there, so it's kinda set and forget.
In this server I don't care about huge ddos (have some isp protection). I care that people/bots gets banned as soon as they try to hack me or scan for vulns.
Cloudflare also make it very easy to hide your server IP.
A self hosted cdn with multiple servers... don't even want to think about that 🤣

Fully agree on everything, but then why big corporation use Cloudflare? They are just too lazy?

Marty McFly said:

Fully agree on everything, but then why big corporation use Cloudflare? They are just too lazy?

in corporations work and decide employees - they have different incentive model than business owners - this model is incompatible with meritocratic decision making - employee doesn't have to be stupid or mean to make stupid decisions, he simply lives in a different reality

JohnnyDoe said:

Most workplaces look like a talent inversion machine.
The least capable always end up running the show. Corporations reward visibility, compliance, and politics, not competence. So the mediocre climb, because climbing is the only thing they are good at. The competent stay in place, because they are the ones doing the work that keeps the whole circus from collapsing. Managers keep them anchored because losing them would hurt output.

Those who know, do it.
Those who do not know, teach.
Those who cannot teach, manage.
Those who don't know, cannot teach and cannot manage, those are the politicians.

good point regarding politicians... that's the very same principle - blatantly wrong incentive model again - it's no surprise they don't maximize well-being of the citizens (tax payers, slaves) because it doesn't lead to their reelection

there one crucial thing to understand - it's all about preferences of those whose energy is burned - burning someone else's energy to express my own preferences breaks the thermodynamic balance and causes instability

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