What the F is "cloudflare"? It's telling me there's an error and I can't get to half the websites I want to visit. Nothing wrong with the websites, it says, it's an internal error with them. What good is a security service that doesn't work?
Cloudflare is a company that provides security, content distribution, and other services to web sites and to companies that host web sites. When Cloudflare has problems, they affect sites using its services. It's a pretty pervasive company, like Amazon Web Services.
Cloudflare's unique strength is in defending against "distributed denial of service" attacks, where some bad guys hack in and take over a bunch of computers on the net and set them off creating a bunch of bogus traffic to a target website. Cloudflare steps in and redirects the traffic to Cloudflare's servers (they have a lot of them) and Cloudflare's servers figure out which is the bogus traffic and which is real traffic, and pass the real traffic on to the underlying website. This is complicated, and something seems to be off the rails today, either Cloudflare had a bad update across its service, or some bad guys have figured out an attack that confuses Cloudflare's servers. Cloudflare is pretty sharp and they will figure it out soon, I'm sure.
If Cloudflare didn't exist, you'd probably not be able to get to any popular website ever...
From the news articles I've subsequently found, it appears that the cause of the problem was Cloudflare failing to do exactly what you just described them as doing. Classic example of failure mode. Get a better boat.
Cloudflare has a gigantic market share in content distribution (~80%) and is used by 30% of the internet. They provide certain services free that companies would have to pay for with other providers. So: it's the right boat for a lot of web sites.
My source: https://kinsta.com/cloudflare-market-share/
So many risks of having a web site. People with blogs on TypePad had to scramble earlier this year to move to another service on not very much notice. I gather it was something of a chore for Alex Ross, with a gigantic number of posts, musical examples, photos, etc., to get his blog moved.
Cloudflare is a company that provides security, content distribution, and other services to web sites and to companies that host web sites. When Cloudflare has problems, they affect sites using its services. It's a pretty pervasive company, like Amazon Web Services.
ReplyDeleteWell, obviously it doesn't provide these things, or it wouldn't be blocking access to websites it admits are working fine.
DeleteCloudflare's unique strength is in defending against "distributed denial of service" attacks, where some bad guys hack in and take over a bunch of computers on the net and set them off creating a bunch of bogus traffic to a target website. Cloudflare steps in and redirects the traffic to Cloudflare's servers (they have a lot of them) and Cloudflare's servers figure out which is the bogus traffic and which is real traffic, and pass the real traffic on to the underlying website. This is complicated, and something seems to be off the rails today, either Cloudflare had a bad update across its service, or some bad guys have figured out an attack that confuses Cloudflare's servers. Cloudflare is pretty sharp and they will figure it out soon, I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteIf Cloudflare didn't exist, you'd probably not be able to get to any popular website ever...
Oh, that was me, forgot to set the name...
DeleteFrom the news articles I've subsequently found, it appears that the cause of the problem was Cloudflare failing to do exactly what you just described them as doing. Classic example of failure mode. Get a better boat.
DeleteIt was a bad configuration file, a sadly common reason for internet outages. There isn't a better boat than Cloudflare for most sites.
DeleteOther sites didn't crash. Get a clue.
DeleteCloudflare has a gigantic market share in content distribution (~80%) and is used by 30% of the internet. They provide certain services free that companies would have to pay for with other providers. So: it's the right boat for a lot of web sites.
DeleteMy source: https://kinsta.com/cloudflare-market-share/
And then, for that price, they get their websites made inaccessible. Such a deal.
DeleteSo many risks of having a web site. People with blogs on TypePad had to scramble earlier this year to move to another service on not very much notice. I gather it was something of a chore for Alex Ross, with a gigantic number of posts, musical examples, photos, etc., to get his blog moved.
Delete