6 ms·

The Cloudflare ToS explicitly exclude that use-case. 2.8 Limitation on Serving Non-HTML Content The Service is offered primarily as a platform to cache and ser

by heipei 6y ago

The Cloudflare ToS explicitly exclude that use-case. 2.8 Limitation on Serving Non-HTML Content The Service is offered primarily as a platform to cache and serve web pages and websites. Unless explicitly included as a part of a Paid Service purchased by you, you agree to use the Service solely for the purpose of serving web pages as viewed through a web browser or other functionally equivalent applications and rendering Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or other functional equivalents. Use of the Service for serving video (unless purchased separately as a Paid Service) or a disproportionate percentage of pictures, audio files, or other non-HTML content, is prohibited.

DoctorOW 6y ago
From what I can tell that's more about their caching service. It mentions exceptions for hosting from a paid service and correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't Backblaze be that paid service?
- jjeaff 6y ago
  They are talking about their own paid service, obviously. I don't think they care whether you are paying for someone else's product or not.
- celicaraptor 6y ago
  Perhaps they are talking about a paid service that they offer,like Cloudflare Stream https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/ https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/
mikehearn 6y ago
In a previous HN post [1] where someone wrote up how to use B2 as an image host, the Cloudflare CEO chimed in and addressed rule 2.8 specifically, saying if Cloudflare workers are used for URL prettifying and redirecting, a different ToS is applied and that use-case would be fine. Does that mean your video use-case would also be fine? I have no idea. An HN comment from the CEO doesn't seem like it would hold up if Cloudflare suddenly shut down your free account. I'd love for Cloudfront to officially clarify the limits of the Cloudfront/B2 alliance in terms of external traffic. The confounding issue here is that B2, as a storage service, is not really intended for "serving web pages and websites" — it's for larger files, binaries, etc. — and therefore any traffic from B2 going through Cloudfront is sort of de facto in violation of 2.8. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20790857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20790857
- brianwski 6y ago
  Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze so I'm biased. :-) > B2, as a storage service, is not really intended for "serving web pages and websites" — it's for larger files, binaries, etc It might be missing a couple features (which is a pet peeve of mine) but we SURELY intend for it to be used for serving web pages. That's one of the largest differences between "Backblaze Personal Backup" (our original product line) and Backblaze B2. The largest parts of the redesign/refit when we originally did B2 was around the concept of what we call "Friendly URLs" (web page names, folder names) instead of just ugly 82 character hexadecimal file names like Backblaze Personal Backup stores all your files in. For full disclosure, Backblaze B2 isn't a great "hosting" solution for something like WordPress because we lack two or three things, one of which is comically easy to fix and I keep trying to convince everyone to do it. The issue is URLs that end in a "/" (trailing slash) basically need to "guess" that after that is an ".html" or ".php" or whatever. So the URL: https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/ski-epic-c/full/2015_scotland_will_macdonald_birthday_in_duns_castle/ https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/ski-epic-c/full/2015_scotl... does not work, but the URL: https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/ski-epic-c/full/2015_scotland_will_macdonald_birthday_in_duns_castle/index.html https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/ski-epic-c/full/2015_scotl... does work. All modern web servers do this automatically filling in of the "index.html", but it is missing from Backblaze B2 currently. And it would take just a day or two for one of our developers to fix it. And dang it, I'm going to get it done one of these days.
  - mahesh_rm 6y ago
    Please be inspired by how Netlify handles url rewriting through their netlify.toml file, in doing so, if it will be possible. :-)
  - john-shaffer 6y ago
    S3's use of separate servers for website hosting is actually very sensible. Options like usage of index.html and error.html only apply on the website servers and won't cause any surprises for people using the service as a key-object store. That said, I would absolutely not consider using B2 without support for index.html, error.html, and Website-Redirect-Location.
judge2020 6y ago
To clarify, the key line is "a disproportionate amount of non-HTML content". Serving videos isn't prohibited but CF still has to prevent free plan websites from becoming huge loss-leaders. Another big asterisk is that this applies to all proxied (DDOS-protected) content, not just the ones that use the CF cache. CF pays for all of their uplink bandwidth out-of-pocket regardless of if it's cached. You can see what happens when you proxy multiple terabytes of content on the free plan in this thread[0] (again all proxied bandwidth costs CF, which is why this user had their zone unproxied). 0: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/the-way-you-handle-bandwidth-over-usage/42969?u=judge https://community.cloudflare.com/t/the-way-you-handle-bandwi...

by heipei 6y ago

DoctorOW 6y ago

From what I can tell that's more about their caching service. It mentions exceptions for hosting from a paid service and correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't Backblaze be that paid service?

jjeaff 6y ago
They are talking about their own paid service, obviously. I don't think they care whether you are paying for someone else's product or not.
celicaraptor 6y ago
Perhaps they are talking about a paid service that they offer,like Cloudflare Stream https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/ https://www.cloudflare.com/products/cloudflare-stream/

mikehearn 6y ago

In a previous HN post [1] where someone wrote up how to use B2 as an image host, the Cloudflare CEO chimed in and addressed rule 2.8 specifically, saying if Cloudflare workers are used for URL prettifying and redirecting, a different ToS is applied and that use-case would be fine. Does that mean your video use-case would also be fine? I have no idea. An HN comment from the CEO doesn't seem like it would hold up if Cloudflare suddenly shut down your free account. I'd love for Cloudfront to officially clarify the limits of the Cloudfront/B2 alliance in terms of external traffic. The confounding issue here is that B2, as a storage service, is not really intended for "serving web pages and websites" — it's for larger files, binaries, etc. — and therefore any traffic from B2 going through Cloudfront is sort of de facto in violation of 2.8. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20790857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20790857

brianwski 6y ago
Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze so I'm biased. :-) > B2, as a storage service, is not really intended for "serving web pages and websites" — it's for larger files, binaries, etc It might be missing a couple features (which is a pet peeve of mine) but we SURELY intend for it to be used for serving web pages. That's one of the largest differences between "Backblaze Personal Backup" (our original product line) and Backblaze B2. The largest parts of the redesign/refit when we originally did B2 was around the concept of what we call "Friendly URLs" (web page names, folder names) instead of just ugly 82 character hexadecimal file names like Backblaze Personal Backup stores all your files in. For full disclosure, Backblaze B2 isn't a great "hosting" solution for something like WordPress because we lack two or three things, one of which is comically easy to fix and I keep trying to convince everyone to do it. The issue is URLs that end in a "/" (trailing slash) basically need to "guess" that after that is an ".html" or ".php" or whatever. So the URL: https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/ski-epic-c/full/2015_scotland_will_macdonald_birthday_in_duns_castle/ https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/ski-epic-c/full/2015_scotl... does not work, but the URL: https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/ski-epic-c/full/2015_scotland_will_macdonald_birthday_in_duns_castle/index.html https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/ski-epic-c/full/2015_scotl... does work. All modern web servers do this automatically filling in of the "index.html", but it is missing from Backblaze B2 currently. And it would take just a day or two for one of our developers to fix it. And dang it, I'm going to get it done one of these days.
- mahesh_rm 6y ago
  Please be inspired by how Netlify handles url rewriting through their netlify.toml file, in doing so, if it will be possible. :-)
- john-shaffer 6y ago
  S3's use of separate servers for website hosting is actually very sensible. Options like usage of index.html and error.html only apply on the website servers and won't cause any surprises for people using the service as a key-object store. That said, I would absolutely not consider using B2 without support for index.html, error.html, and Website-Redirect-Location.

judge2020 6y ago

To clarify, the key line is "a disproportionate amount of non-HTML content". Serving videos isn't prohibited but CF still has to prevent free plan websites from becoming huge loss-leaders. Another big asterisk is that this applies to all proxied (DDOS-protected) content, not just the ones that use the CF cache. CF pays for all of their uplink bandwidth out-of-pocket regardless of if it's cached. You can see what happens when you proxy multiple terabytes of content on the free plan in this thread[0] (again all proxied bandwidth costs CF, which is why this user had their zone unproxied). 0: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/the-way-you-handle-bandwidth-over-usage/42969?u=judge https://community.cloudflare.com/t/the-way-you-handle-bandwi...