Cloudflare is slow and Cloudflare can’t do much about it

[fwlr]

“Cloudflare is slow [in India] and Cloudflare [probably] can’t do much about it [but I don’t know because I’m not paying for support]” would be a more accurate title, although it’s far too snarky.

“Cloudflare is slow because of an Indian ISP” or “Cloudflare is slow in India and Cloudflare can’t do much about it” would both still be improvements.

[MichaelZuo]

"Cloudflare is slow in India and Cloudflare can’t do much about it because certain parties are unwilling to bear the cost of the necessary changes"

Would be the most accurate.

[PrimeMcFly]

So likely what happened is India just blocked one ISP because a website they wanted to block resolved to it, without bothering to check what the IP was or who it belonged to.

I remember Australia making similar mistakes when their list of sites to block got leaked, and it included URL's which were specific to logged in users (so it would have blocked that users login as opposed to the site).

[hammyhavoc]

Misleading title as it lacks context.

[VoidWhisperer]

It could be argued that the title is just plain wrong - this doesn't seem to be a problem with cloudflare as the title would imply, it is an issue caused by the user's ISP and other ISPs in their country blocking certain IP addresses for some reason or another.

[throwaway75]

From India, and cloudflare to my website resolves to the same ip block. The 172.67.198.x is very much reachable. In fact I can ping and access the exact ip in the article. Not sure what the OP's problem was, but it does not seem to be cloudflare or a govt block.

Edit: Link to screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/d7zLuCP

[benatkin]

Russia has blocked Cloudflare before too. You can see it in the issues for jsDelivr (which apparently handles a lot of traffic for TASS, since they use the CDN and browsers don't share caches for privacy reasons). https://github.com/jsdelivr/jsdelivr/issues/762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24894135 https://learningjquery.com/2012/01/why-to-use-google-hosted-...

[rektide]

India is blocking a bunch of the IPs.

Here's a new acronym for us: "Problem Exists Between User And Internet; PEBUI.

This is definitely the next 5 years+ of computing. More and more nations making more and more wild ass decisions about the internet & users ending up disconnected. PEBUI.

[throwawaaarrgh]

It was a completely foreseeable result of a very small minority's war on internet standards. First forcing everyone to use TLS, and then forcing everyone to use stronger forms of TLS that couldn't be inspected. Absolutely no fucks given about the many downsides, no alternatives considered.

What did they think countries were gonna do? Just give up governing? Did they really think a web browser was going to defeat an entire nation state's domestic and foreign policy?

Rather than allow the user to determine their own level of security and privacy, they forced the user to choose the strongest method, which of course forced governments to use more extreme measures to fulfill their legislative requirements. Rather than just spying on users or filter their traffic, now they outright just block the internet. Thanks internet standards paternalists! Having no internet is so much better than internet without privacy.

[catminou]

India is well known for blocking CDNs IPs for a variety of reasons (don't like the content, or because you can VPN on top of them).

I've seen some CDNs who don't use anycast and rely primarily on DNS to cycle thru the IP pools vended in India because the government is slow to add new addresses to block and they maintain a cool down period before reintroducing them.

The shitty part is that the entity in India issuing this never reaches out to the CDNs to communicate exactly what they object to.

[stuckkeys]

I don't have much to add about the title except to suggest taking it with a hint of skepticism. Personally, I have a strong affinity for Cloudflare. It has consistently come to my rescue on numerous occasions. I haven't encountered any issues with speed while using their services. It's possible that my fast ISP plays a role, or perhaps the original poster needs to optimize their CF services. However, I believe it's unfair to make a straightforward claim that "They are slow" without considering potential biases. The performance of the services will always vary, and ultimately, the maximum output will depend on the specifics (end point?)

[throwawaaarrgh]

I stopped using their caching because they literally won't stop caching the old version of my site. It's just a Google Pages site and I have no idea how to get them to refresh their cache. But a year later they still return the old page. Just using DNS pass through rather than caching and the site works fine.

[selcuka]

They have a "Purge Cache" [1] button on their UI (and there is also an API endpoint).

[1] https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/how-to/purge-cache/

[freitasm]

This is not accurate ay all. A problem with ISPs blocking IP addresses is not a Cloudflare problem.

[asdz]

If only China have access to HN, we will get this kind of posts every second

[bakugo]

Not just a problem in india, happens in some european countries as well.

[bawolff]

Title seems a bit unfair. Tl;dr: cloudflare is slow due to gov censorship in india

[re-thc]

Even that's unfair. Not like every Indian ISP was tested.

[kytazo]

Doesn't get faster than cloudflare https://www.dnsperf.com/

[benatkin]

Except Cloudflare is irrelevant for people running their own little sites on VPSes, and can make it worse, as the article demonstrates.

[neom]

Any idea why DigitalOcean is so good?

[dfsl]

I agree with article's title that Cloudflare is slow but I don't agree that Cloudflare can't do much about it. For instance, putting efforts to remove bots and malicious actors from using its platform is one thing, Cloudflare can do with more seriousness.

Cloudflare turned out to be a big mistake for us. Read our experience:

https://freesoftware.life/how-to-speed-up-your-wordpress-web...

https://freesoftware.life/how-using-cloudflare-free-plan-des...