CloudFlare - Free Site Security and CDN-like Caching

[techairlines]

Just launched last week at TechCrunch Disrupt 2010, CloudFlare is a new (free) service that works to protect and speed up your site.

http://www.cloudflare.com/

I've been invited to a private beta of CloudFlare in July and my experience was amazing. Now, its open to the general public.

CloudFlare works as a DNS provider and therefore is able to protect your site before threats even reach your server (such as x10hosting).

It works like this. CloudFlare acts like a proxy and when visitors enter your domain name, they reach CloudFlare's servers. They check your IP and if its a threat, you will be presented with a "Challenge Page". This has a CAPTCHA test that the visitor can pass to enter through to your site. It also has a warning that their IP is flagged and their computer might be in danger. After the CAPTCHA, they can go through to your normal site. You can also whitelist IPs as well as simply block them completely.

CloudFlare will then request the appropriate files from your server. Afterwards, it will cache all static content (html, images, css, js) and whenever it gets requested again, it will be served from CloudFlare, not your own server. This can save you tons of bandwidth.

CloudFlare also has a CDN-like infrastructure with 5 datacenters around the world right now and will serve your static content from the datacenter that's closet to the location of the visitor.

Thanks to caching, even if your web host/server is down, static content can still be kept online. CloudFlare will seamlessly enter Offline Browsing.

I wrote up a more detailed overview of this here: http://www.techairlines.com/2010/09/28/cloudflare-site-security/

I recommend x10hosting users give this a try.
http://www.cloudflare.com/sign-up.html

Note: You will need your own domain name (TLDs only) for this and it requires nameserver changes, so x10 provided subdomains will not work. Other than that, there is no other configuration needed.

 

[Hoobrum]

Sounds awesome - but how can they afford it? Do they inject ads in?

 

[callumacrae]

Sounds amazing!

~Callum

 

[techairlines]

Sounds awesome - but how can they afford it? Do they inject ads in?

Nope, no ads at all.

They have a premium upgrade for 20 dollars a month (and 5 dollars for each additional site) as well as an Enterprise version.

They are also from the team behind Project Honey Pot, so some funding comes from that.

There is an option to track outbound links in the analytics which uses a third party service (VigLink), but this can be disabled in one click. Looking at the VigLink site, they earn money from this service. I'm not sure if this is enabled by default or not.

According to the CEO, the challenge page has an ad to an anti-virus product. See: http://support.cloudflare.com/tb/di...t-running-a-script-on-my-site#comment_3028038

But basically, there are no ads on your actual website.

 

[damoncloudflare]

Hi techairlines,

"Nope, no ads at all."

The only ads that would appear on the interstitial page before someone hits your site/server. A more detailed explanation can be found at Quora. It is important to note that this page is *only presented* to site visitors that may be problematic (spammers, hackers, etc.).

"There is an option to track outbound links in the analytics which uses a third party service (VigLink), but this can be disabled in one click. Looking at the VigLink site, they earn money from this service. I'm not sure if this is enabled by default or not."

Enabled by default (can be turned off by going to settings->CloudFlare settings->Outbound Link Tracking (toggle off).

I just wanted to help clarify the comments really quickly. I promise I won't spam the forums at all.

 

[diabolo]

I would love to try this out. I used to have a TLD but too bad that I let it go and can't try out this system. Ill keep it in mind when I get my domain back or if they open up to subdomains.