Cloudflare is a hugely successful American service which combines a reverse proxy with a content delivery network, and throws a host of bonus security and optimisation tools into the technical mix.
The service isn’t a conventional CDN. You don’t have to choose the specific content you’d like to cache, and there’s no need to edit your site code. Instead, you update your DNS nameservers to use Cloudflare, and once the changes have propagated (officially this could take 24 hours, typically it’s much less) the service kicks in automatically.
Some of the benefits are similar to other CDNs. Cloudflare detects the location of any visitors and directs them to its nearest data centre. This serves your content from its own cache if possible, improving response times.
Other advantages are more low-level. Because Cloudflare knows all about your web traffic, it can filter it in various ways. The program can block threats based on reputation, HTTP headers, blacklists and more. It can stop or restrict abusive bots, limit comment spam, protect key ports (SSH, telnet, FTP) from hackers, or detect and mitigate DDoS attacks in various ways.
Quality extras include some effective image optimisations. Cloudflare’s ‘Polish’ technology …read more
Source:: techradar.com – PC and Mac
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