5 ms·

I'm also really worried about that. (It's just a feeling but..) for a service as big as Cloudflare I think it may be not as failure proof and clustered designed

I'm also really worried about that. (It's just a feeling but..) for a service as big as Cloudflare I think it may be not as failure proof and clustered designed as it should be for a massive DNS provider. I for myself pay for a smaller DNS provider like CloudDNS with a bigger redundancy in NS servers (4 instead of 2 at Cloudflare) than going for free at Cloudflare.

cbg0 8y ago
> bigger redundancy in NS servers (4 instead of 2 at Cloudflare) I don't think this is really all that important, as typically all these servers are running anycast. If you really wanted redundancy, you would have NS records from at least two different providers.
- therealmarv 8y ago
  That's a good point. A backup DNS on another service is on my bucket list once sites get a little bigger and more relevant (right now it's not worth it).
peterwwillis 8y ago
You're paying for a service that's less robust because they have more IP addresses serving their database?
- therealmarv 8y ago
  For the time beeing I'm not sure which is more or less robust because I have not seen any DNS outages in both.
rdl 8y ago
Cloudflare is one control plane, but it's 1) anycast 2) over 100 locations 3) multiple servers per site. The SPOF with Cloudflare is either your account getting hacked, or (much less likely) a CF control plane/configuration outage. Someone could probably build a better DNS provider than Cloudflare, at least for their specific site, but it would be difficult. I don't know of any other DNS provider I'd consider more robust, particularly against high load, DoS, etc. (Disclaimer: worked for Cloudflare 2014-2016)
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  This is rather weird claim. Getting your account hacked is the least of your worries, when every single thing is maintained by a single organization, a single team, on a single autonomous system, with lots of reliance on single hardware and software components. This is basically three nines level stuff, with hours of downtime per year on average. It's relatively easy to do better than that with do-it-yourself CDN using DNS-routed multiple independent hosting providers for edge nodes, getting to four, five nines level. (and DNS separately is not worth talking about, because it has built in redundancy, anything will always be more reliable than a centralized DNS provider)
  - viraptor 8y ago
    > with lots of reliance on single hardware and software components Are your saying you have inside knowledge and that's the architecture? (I'm guessing no)
    - peterwwillis 8y ago
      I've never seen any company use completely different software or hardware for each redundant instance of a service, so it's a pretty good bet CloudFlare isn't doing this either.
      - close04 8y ago
        That would imply a SPOF. One component of any kind that can take down the whole thing. The only such “component” I can think of is a human, not a technical one.
        zzzcpan 8y ago
        I meant single kind of component, not one thing handling everything. If you use juniper routers, for example, a juniper specific software, hardware problem or a mistaken assumption about juniper specifics could take down all routers and an entire network.

cbg0 8y ago

> bigger redundancy in NS servers (4 instead of 2 at Cloudflare) I don't think this is really all that important, as typically all these servers are running anycast. If you really wanted redundancy, you would have NS records from at least two different providers.

therealmarv 8y ago
That's a good point. A backup DNS on another service is on my bucket list once sites get a little bigger and more relevant (right now it's not worth it).

peterwwillis 8y ago

You're paying for a service that's less robust because they have more IP addresses serving their database?

therealmarv 8y ago
For the time beeing I'm not sure which is more or less robust because I have not seen any DNS outages in both.

rdl 8y ago

Cloudflare is one control plane, but it's 1) anycast 2) over 100 locations 3) multiple servers per site. The SPOF with Cloudflare is either your account getting hacked, or (much less likely) a CF control plane/configuration outage. Someone could probably build a better DNS provider than Cloudflare, at least for their specific site, but it would be difficult. I don't know of any other DNS provider I'd consider more robust, particularly against high load, DoS, etc. (Disclaimer: worked for Cloudflare 2014-2016)

zzzcpan 8y ago
This is rather weird claim. Getting your account hacked is the least of your worries, when every single thing is maintained by a single organization, a single team, on a single autonomous system, with lots of reliance on single hardware and software components. This is basically three nines level stuff, with hours of downtime per year on average. It's relatively easy to do better than that with do-it-yourself CDN using DNS-routed multiple independent hosting providers for edge nodes, getting to four, five nines level. (and DNS separately is not worth talking about, because it has built in redundancy, anything will always be more reliable than a centralized DNS provider)
- viraptor 8y ago
  > with lots of reliance on single hardware and software components Are your saying you have inside knowledge and that's the architecture? (I'm guessing no)
  - peterwwillis 8y ago
    I've never seen any company use completely different software or hardware for each redundant instance of a service, so it's a pretty good bet CloudFlare isn't doing this either.
    - close04 8y ago
      That would imply a SPOF. One component of any kind that can take down the whole thing. The only such “component” I can think of is a human, not a technical one.
      - zzzcpan 8y ago
        I meant single kind of component, not one thing handling everything. If you use juniper routers, for example, a juniper specific software, hardware problem or a mistaken assumption about juniper specifics could take down all routers and an entire network.