Cloudflare and other cdn caches are a pretty standard web technology. Literally storing files closer to the client and serving it from hardware specializing in fast static serving
Yeah, there's no getting around physics when moving data over a long distance. Even in the absolute best case scenario if you ran a single uninterrupted fiber optic cable half way around the world it would still take about 100ms for light to cross it (fiber isn't quite as fast as the speed of light in a vacuum), and it's only downhill from there with realistic networking and protocol handshakes slowing things down.
You can't get around the laws of physics, but you can control the number of round trips necessary to render your website. With HTTP/3, you can deliver data to a client after just one RTT, and a 200-250 ms time-to-first-byte is still plenty fast for a CRUD app.
Size isn't the only consideration though. Latency is pretty much a fixed cost for web resources, and caching is very beneficial if your edge cache is closer to the user than the origin server (and it is, unless you're very unlucky).
Agreed, for example I have a ping of 200ms to Hacker News, and the last time I checked it still runs on a single core, and yet there was never a moment where I wished that Hacker News would be faster.
(Sometimes Hacker News gets fronted by Cloudflare when there is too much spam, but it's not the default)
is is a quick fix. and for smaller websites i recommend it. However it has its limits and it can frustrate when you are developing. But in general yeah good free service.
> Serve Stale Content While Revalidating (Not Working as Expected)
> This is the only thing that I was not able to figure out.
For good reason, because (at the last time I tried this earlier this year) Cloudflare documents stale-while-revalidate as if it's supported [1], but it isn't [2], [3].
Cloudflare instead has a different behaviour [4], [5] which helps in some circumstances but not all.
If it is free, then you are the product. If you need a CDN, there are cheap solutions out there. And Pics should always be delivered from your domain, not from CF.
CF doesn't use you as the product, a la Facebook, Instagram or Google. They try to lure you in with the free tier, and then upsell.
That's a bussiness model that you might like or not, but almost everyone is doing that one way or the other (first X months are free, free tiers, free Comunity Editions, etc.)
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 66.2 ms ] threadCache Reserve pricing is based on storage usage but optional.
I'm not a big fan of adding more complexity (infra and money) to improve performance.
The problem is modern day CDN do many clever things it is easy to go wrong.
(Sometimes Hacker News gets fronted by Cloudflare when there is too much spam, but it's not the default)
Also have heard things like jscompress to reduce the number of calls on loading a page can go a long way too to boost speed.
> This is the only thing that I was not able to figure out.
For good reason, because (at the last time I tried this earlier this year) Cloudflare documents stale-while-revalidate as if it's supported [1], but it isn't [2], [3].
Cloudflare instead has a different behaviour [4], [5] which helps in some circumstances but not all.
I use Fastly's free CDN plan to get round this.
1. https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/concepts/revalidatio...
2. https://community.cloudflare.com/t/support-for-stale-while-r...
3. https://community.cloudflare.com/t/when-will-cloudflare-full...
4. https://kerkour.com/cloudflare-stale-while-revalidate
5. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48124415/does-cloudflare...
Why you should never use Cloudflare. It causes problems, is bad for SEO and a Spyware tool.
https://expatcircle.com/cms/why-you-should-never-use-cloudfl...
If it is free, then you are the product. If you need a CDN, there are cheap solutions out there. And Pics should always be delivered from your domain, not from CF.
I use Linux and it’s free. Am I the product?
How much experience buying and selling it and getting it to free do you have to make that claim? Can you link to any peer reviewed studies?
That's a bussiness model that you might like or not, but almost everyone is doing that one way or the other (first X months are free, free tiers, free Comunity Editions, etc.)
Fastly's ability to sensibly price their product, market their product, and stop losing money hand over fist is trash.
And I write this as someone who has been snubbed by Fastly multiple times.
Squashed between Akamai and Cloudflare, I will be sorry to see them go.