5 ms·

I know the context, but that's irrelevant here. Whatever the cause, a root cause analysis pointing back to CF is nice for CF to help solve the situation, and is

I know the context, but that's irrelevant here. Whatever the cause, a root cause analysis pointing back to CF is nice for CF to help solve the situation, and is even nice to have for us tech enthusiasts here on HN (though it should still maintain professionalism). But for customers and decision makers at companies that might be looking at considering purchasing Cloudflare, you know what I don't care about? Who's fault it was. There are multiple buckets of companies here: 1. Cloud providers that were effected enough to apparently devote not insignificant CEO and CTO time to it (Cloudflare) 2. Cloud providers that were affected but seemingly not enough for it to even register as anything more than a blip on their status tracker (Google, AWS, etc) 3. Cloud providers that weren't effected As a potential customer thinking about buying services from one of these companies, which one do you think I am doing to do with? It certainly won't be CF. And if I am already engaged with CF, I want to know what CF is going to do to mitigate this situation in the future, and no, pointing fingers like a child and saying "it wasn't our fault!" doesn't count. Cloudflare can't really control Verizon's actions that lead to this situation, but they can control how they respond to it and mitigate it. They had an opportunity to stand up as a leader and improve the internet (which is literally their company motto). As you pointed out, the internet working correctly is a matter of companies working together as good actors, and getting these companies to work together via good, strong relationships is a part of that. Did Cloudflare do that? Nah. Instead, they made a petty blog post and their CEO is on Twitter telling Verizon they should be ashamed. I don't know exactly what his goal there was, but I assume it has something to do with hoping they'll be better in the future (if that's not his goal, then it really is just petty finger pointing). And if Cloudflare's CEO's method of getting people to improve their work is to publicly shame them, I really feel bad for anyone who works under him.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
To be frank, your post makes it clear that you don't know the context. CF simply cannot do anything on their own to mitigate the problem where Verizon constructs bad BGP routes to Cloudflare IPs and then advertises those routes to third parties. The only mitigation possible is to contact whoever's advertising the bad routes and get them to stop.
- txcwpalpha 7y ago
  Have you read Cloudflare's multiple blog posts regarding BGP? Did you read the tweets from their directors talking about how other customers were unaffected by the event today because of the mitigations put in place? Did you even do the simplest Google about BGP protocols and the plans in place to prevent this from happening in the future? If you're going to try to impose yourself as the gatekeeper of "knowing the context", you should probably know it yourself. Saying CF "simply cannot do anything" is narrow minded at best, and completely wrong otherwise. In fact, in this very blog post linked in the OP, Cloudflare talks about taking steps to mitigate BGP issues in the future. That's great, if only it wasn't also paired with a childish finger pointing session.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ubercow13 7y ago
    AT&T customers were unaffected because of mitigations put in place by AT&T that Verizon hasn't put in place. The steps you refer to in the blog post are ones that Verzion has to take.
    - txcwpalpha 7y ago
      Yes, and? Cloudflare themselves are the ones pushing their own company as "leaders" in this field, and being a "leader" does not mean "pointing fingers and trying to avoid blame whenever something bad happens". If they fancy themselves leaders regarding BGP, as said on their website, then they need to actually act like leaders. And as I've said multiple times now, Cloudflare was in a great position here to stand themselves up as a strong leader on this topic to start working together with other companies (a la Verizon) to start to make real headway to fix the BGP problem. As other commenters have noted, the internet is entirely built on multiple organizations acting in good faith towards one another. Verizon failed to do that, and Cloudflare's response also failed to do that. I said it in another comment, but I'll also say it here: publicly berating the people that you are supposedly taking a leadership position over is not good leadership. This entire episode is going to do nothing to encourage Verizon to work closely with CF to fix this issue. In fact, I imagine it will do the exact opposite. Today was a display of incompetence from Verizon, and a display of bad leadership by Cloudflare. I have no idea why any objective-minded person would be applauding Cloudflare for this. As I mentioned elsewhere, I would normally love a good public bashing of Verizon, but not when it comes at the cost of professionalism and progress.
ubercow13 7y ago
>Did Cloudflare do that? Yes? >Cloudflare has decided that it's high-time we took a leadership role to finally secure BGP routing etc. https://blog.cloudflare.com/rpki/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/rpki/ >their CEO is on Twitter telling Verizon they should be ashamed Yes, well >I'll be the first to line up for a good publish lashing of US ISPs
- txcwpalpha 7y ago
  There's a huge difference between saying you're going to be a leader and, y'know, actually being a leader. And there's an even huger difference between that and being an effective leader. I follow Cloudflare and eastdakota a lot. He clearly has the capability to be an effective leader (he is a CEO after all), and I personally admire him. However, in this particular situation, publicly berating the people that he is supposedly taking a "leadership role" over does not a good leader make.
Dylan16807 7y ago
As far as mitigations, you're demanding they magically fix something they don't control. It's kind of infuriating, really. Stop what you're doing and reassess, please.
eecc 7y ago
So your definition of successful and mature business is a management team that doesn’t give 2f? Wow

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

To be frank, your post makes it clear that you don't know the context. CF simply cannot do anything on their own to mitigate the problem where Verizon constructs bad BGP routes to Cloudflare IPs and then advertises those routes to third parties. The only mitigation possible is to contact whoever's advertising the bad routes and get them to stop.

txcwpalpha 7y ago
Have you read Cloudflare's multiple blog posts regarding BGP? Did you read the tweets from their directors talking about how other customers were unaffected by the event today because of the mitigations put in place? Did you even do the simplest Google about BGP protocols and the plans in place to prevent this from happening in the future? If you're going to try to impose yourself as the gatekeeper of "knowing the context", you should probably know it yourself. Saying CF "simply cannot do anything" is narrow minded at best, and completely wrong otherwise. In fact, in this very blog post linked in the OP, Cloudflare talks about taking steps to mitigate BGP issues in the future. That's great, if only it wasn't also paired with a childish finger pointing session.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ubercow13 7y ago
  AT&T customers were unaffected because of mitigations put in place by AT&T that Verizon hasn't put in place. The steps you refer to in the blog post are ones that Verzion has to take.
  - txcwpalpha 7y ago
    Yes, and? Cloudflare themselves are the ones pushing their own company as "leaders" in this field, and being a "leader" does not mean "pointing fingers and trying to avoid blame whenever something bad happens". If they fancy themselves leaders regarding BGP, as said on their website, then they need to actually act like leaders. And as I've said multiple times now, Cloudflare was in a great position here to stand themselves up as a strong leader on this topic to start working together with other companies (a la Verizon) to start to make real headway to fix the BGP problem. As other commenters have noted, the internet is entirely built on multiple organizations acting in good faith towards one another. Verizon failed to do that, and Cloudflare's response also failed to do that. I said it in another comment, but I'll also say it here: publicly berating the people that you are supposedly taking a leadership position over is not good leadership. This entire episode is going to do nothing to encourage Verizon to work closely with CF to fix this issue. In fact, I imagine it will do the exact opposite. Today was a display of incompetence from Verizon, and a display of bad leadership by Cloudflare. I have no idea why any objective-minded person would be applauding Cloudflare for this. As I mentioned elsewhere, I would normally love a good public bashing of Verizon, but not when it comes at the cost of professionalism and progress.

ubercow13 7y ago

>Did Cloudflare do that? Yes? >Cloudflare has decided that it's high-time we took a leadership role to finally secure BGP routing etc. https://blog.cloudflare.com/rpki/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/rpki/ >their CEO is on Twitter telling Verizon they should be ashamed Yes, well >I'll be the first to line up for a good publish lashing of US ISPs

txcwpalpha 7y ago
There's a huge difference between saying you're going to be a leader and, y'know, actually being a leader. And there's an even huger difference between that and being an effective leader. I follow Cloudflare and eastdakota a lot. He clearly has the capability to be an effective leader (he is a CEO after all), and I personally admire him. However, in this particular situation, publicly berating the people that he is supposedly taking a "leadership role" over does not a good leader make.

Dylan16807 7y ago

As far as mitigations, you're demanding they magically fix something they don't control. It's kind of infuriating, really. Stop what you're doing and reassess, please.

eecc 7y ago

So your definition of successful and mature business is a management team that doesn’t give 2f? Wow