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Ditch cloudflare and write the web server in assembly and see if it holds up to raw HN traffic. Bonus points if you have an L1 cache and can fit and serve your entire website from it.

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I think the 38400 baud connection is a bigger issue than the CPU load. When I get Ethernet working I think there is a decent chance that I won’t need CloudFlare—especially if I can find a full 32-bit server that really uses the potential of the 386. Now to wait for that card to arrive in the mail. ;)

Edit: If you want to visit the page directly without CloudFlare, go to http://trombone.zapto.org instead.

I guess the next challenge is gigabit ethernet (!!!) for the 386

There are 100 Mbps (Fast Ethernet) cards for the ISA bus, which in practice can apparently be around 50% faster than 10 Mbps Ethernet over such a bus. However, they seemed pretty expensive compared to the ubiquitous 3com Etherlink III that are available quite cheaply. I think Ethernet will still make a huge difference in terms of serving this site.

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