It's 2024. I still don't know what Cloudflare does | Hacker News Reader

It's 2024. I still don't know what Cloudflare does

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18 pointslopkeny12ko13 comments

Pretty good DNS server if you don't want to get DDOSed easily.

When they started, I understood them as a CDN - storing copies of your static(ish) bytes on lots of servers distributed globally.

Happens to be that a globally distributed network of endpoints is also pretty great for absorbing DDOS attacks, so they started offering that too. And then I guess they parlayed that further into offering other T1/T2 level Internet services too.

I don't use them for CDN / DDOS but I do use them for other things and I think they're great.

I know all the people I’ve met who have worked there are not fun people to work with!

Ouch. Big egos in tech are a cliche to be dispelled whenever possible by contrary example setting and not taking oneself too seriously. I turned down a ~ £ 2.5 million exit to avoid being golden handcuffed to an absolute dick co-founder for 3 years. Sometimes, your sanity is worth more than any amount of superficial or external stuff.

Genuinely cool, reliable peeps with a sense of humor are the best peeps to work with.

I don’t disagree. All I can say is that Cloudflare alumni and employees have some of the worst people I’ve come across in the industry. Toxic, rude, egotistical, and weirdly elitist for no reason.

I don’t know why or what it is, but that’s just been my experience…so I don’t have the best depiction of the company overall

https://lmgtfy.click/?q=cloudflare+wiki

So difficult

TL;DR - Scalable DNS, TLS termination, app firewall, caching, and CDN

Also check out fastly which was/is Varnish-based and built by ex Wikia peeps.

If you have enough budget, engineering talent, or customers & ARPU, you can build your own AnyCast CDN, DDoS defenses, app caching, and app firewall. Until you have very high bills with SaaS third-party vendors, that's the time to think about migrating to DIY, but otherwise stick with division of labor and specialization of trade for things that aren't your core business.

I am curious how do they justify a $200 million loss on almost $2 billion in revenue (2023).

$NET revenue in 2023 was $1.3 billion -https://www.google.com/finance/quote/NET:NYSE

SSL added and removed here! :-)

Hide real IP addresses of controversial web sites and services?

MITM kings

Simple - they act as the largest man-in-the-middle attack ever staged ... and people pay them to do it

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