6 ms·

Ask HN: How to Compete with Cloudflare

36 points by jcuenod 4y ago

This week we're going to see a bunch more announcements from CF. They'll probably all have a top comment about how CF is the MITM of the internet and a single point of failure. Is this simply the future we're doomed to live in?

pramodbiligiri 4y ago
Ben Thompson has analyzed in his blog how Cloudflare applied the Disruptive Innovation model - https://stratechery.com/2021/cloudflares-disruption/ https://stratechery.com/2021/cloudflares-disruption/. The CTO of Cloudflare sort of acknowledged that on HN back then - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28708371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28708371 There must be new niches ("value networks" as per that blog) that Cloudflare finds not worthwhile to serve. Usually they're at the lower end or the "nonconsumption" case, as described in the above blog post. That's one way to chip away at a bit of their customer base. But it's best to just focus on customers and not imagine you're "competing with Cloudflare". Nothing to be gained by framing it that way.
- dave4420 4y ago
  But if you do that, won’t you just be another company MITMing the internet?
  - pramodbiligiri 4y ago
    Ah. Looks like I took the question fairly literally and didn’t think about the MITM part. No idea about that.
dave4420 4y ago
I don’t understand why people are so up in arms about Cloudflare being a MITM, but not e.g. AWS API Gateway being a MITM.
- Minor49er 4y ago
  Probably due to the recent news about Cloudflare dropping their clients, namely Kiwi Farms, claiming things as severe as "unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life unlike (Cloudflare has) previously seen" [1] without disclosing what exactly it was that they saw (also curiously without law enforcement getting involved). To my knowledge, AWS API Gateway has not dropped a client without adequate reason, which is why I'd imagine that Cloudflare is being specifically talked about [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/kiwifarms-blocked/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/kiwifarms-blocked/
  - dave4420 4y ago
    To my knowledge, there’s never been a concerted campaign to get AWS to drop anyone as a client, whereas this seems to happen a lot to Cloudflare (Kiwi Farms being the latest example). And anyway, if Cloudflare MITMing the internet is bad, then isn’t them having one fewer client a good thing? (Even if said ex-client would rather still be a current client.)
    - NathanKP 4y ago
      Parler was an example of AWS dropping a bad customer, both for TOS violations, and because of a concerted campaign to get all the major providers to drop them.
  - breaker-kind 4y ago
    what do you mean, exactly what it was that they saw!?!? Kiwi Farms was actively sanctioning stalking, doxxing, and large-scale cyber-harassment against the trans community
    - YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
      ...all evidence of which was on the very website which they rendered inaccessible. So now that it's gone, all we have is their word.
      - johnklos 4y ago
- WallyFunk 4y ago
  Cloudflare is one Internet choke-point among a handful of others. But it still means content is centralized, only centralized across a handful of different providers.
- johnklos 4y ago
  Did Amazon make a deal with Firefox to send all browsing DNS lookups to them without asking end users? Is Amazon trying to encourage people to use DNS-over-https with specious claims that your ISP is evil, but of course Cloudflare is not, without telling us that DoH takes control away from us so we can't block ads or otherwise decide what we want to allow or block? Is Amazon trying to push everything through just a handful of IPs so that people can't block nefarious content without also blocking legitimate content? If everyone were on-board with what Cloudflare wants, the Internet would be re-centralized around them, and because they don't "host" (which is a special kind of bullshit) and they don't "censor", bad actors will have free reign, so long as Cloudflare is making $$$.
  - majke 4y ago
    > If everyone were on-board with what Cloudflare wants, the Internet would be... You got me lost here. Cloudflare is making money by having everyone re-centralized around it? Where is the revenue from?
    - johnklos 4y ago
      Not sure if you're trolling here, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a legitimate question. People asked the same about Facebook and Google. Monopolies can extract money from all sorts of things that appear to not necessarily directly generate revenue. What happens when all the large players are using Cloudflare? They become a monopoly. Businesses small and large can't afford to not use them, because businesses don't want to give the appearance of being at a disadvantage. DDoS gangs will extort money from the holdouts, and it'll just become what businesses use. Cloudflare already has a problem where they block large portions of the Internet and either make it so their access to Cloudflare hosted sites either has to go through CAPTCHAs or outright are blocked. If this starts happening to large ISPs, they'll be in a position where they, the ISPs, will be expected to solve problems of Cloudflare's creation. I bet there'll be paid programs for ISPs where ISPs pay for the privilege to correspond with Cloudflare, agree to be "good" (Cloudflare's definition of good), and will suffer financially (because their traffic will be marginalized) if they don't agree to whatever Cloudflare wants. We're seeing the pieces being assembled now.
bethecloud 4y ago
Best way to compete with Cloudflare is to use decentralized cloud storage options, that are compatible with S3, cheaper, and faster – like storj.io
- jcuenod 4y ago
  Do you have any connection to storj?
  - castis 4y ago
    It would appear that they are either the owner or have some deep relation to it.
    - jcuenod 4y ago
      Yes, that was my not-so-subtle request for a disclosure...
- altdataseller 4y ago
  CloudFlare already is offering that in R2.
jacooper 4y ago
Cloudflare offers a lot of stuff, if you mean compete on DDOS protection, you best case is host-provider DDOA protection, which won't MITM connections.
melonrusk 4y ago
Gatekeeper ? https://github.com/AltraMayor/gatekeeper/wiki https://github.com/AltraMayor/gatekeeper/wiki
- majke 4y ago
  This is funny. Cloudflare ddos systems were named: Gatekeeper, gatesetter, gatebot, floodgate, gatewatch :)

36 points by jcuenod 4y ago

pramodbiligiri 4y ago

Ben Thompson has analyzed in his blog how Cloudflare applied the Disruptive Innovation model - https://stratechery.com/2021/cloudflares-disruption/ https://stratechery.com/2021/cloudflares-disruption/. The CTO of Cloudflare sort of acknowledged that on HN back then - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28708371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28708371 There must be new niches ("value networks" as per that blog) that Cloudflare finds not worthwhile to serve. Usually they're at the lower end or the "nonconsumption" case, as described in the above blog post. That's one way to chip away at a bit of their customer base. But it's best to just focus on customers and not imagine you're "competing with Cloudflare". Nothing to be gained by framing it that way.

dave4420 4y ago
But if you do that, won’t you just be another company MITMing the internet?
- pramodbiligiri 4y ago
  Ah. Looks like I took the question fairly literally and didn’t think about the MITM part. No idea about that.

dave4420 4y ago

I don’t understand why people are so up in arms about Cloudflare being a MITM, but not e.g. AWS API Gateway being a MITM.

Minor49er 4y ago
Probably due to the recent news about Cloudflare dropping their clients, namely Kiwi Farms, claiming things as severe as "unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life unlike (Cloudflare has) previously seen" [1] without disclosing what exactly it was that they saw (also curiously without law enforcement getting involved). To my knowledge, AWS API Gateway has not dropped a client without adequate reason, which is why I'd imagine that Cloudflare is being specifically talked about [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/kiwifarms-blocked/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/kiwifarms-blocked/
- dave4420 4y ago
  To my knowledge, there’s never been a concerted campaign to get AWS to drop anyone as a client, whereas this seems to happen a lot to Cloudflare (Kiwi Farms being the latest example). And anyway, if Cloudflare MITMing the internet is bad, then isn’t them having one fewer client a good thing? (Even if said ex-client would rather still be a current client.)
  - NathanKP 4y ago
    Parler was an example of AWS dropping a bad customer, both for TOS violations, and because of a concerted campaign to get all the major providers to drop them.
- breaker-kind 4y ago
  what do you mean, exactly what it was that they saw!?!? Kiwi Farms was actively sanctioning stalking, doxxing, and large-scale cyber-harassment against the trans community
  - YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
    ...all evidence of which was on the very website which they rendered inaccessible. So now that it's gone, all we have is their word.
    - johnklos 4y ago
WallyFunk 4y ago
Cloudflare is one Internet choke-point among a handful of others. But it still means content is centralized, only centralized across a handful of different providers.
johnklos 4y ago
Did Amazon make a deal with Firefox to send all browsing DNS lookups to them without asking end users? Is Amazon trying to encourage people to use DNS-over-https with specious claims that your ISP is evil, but of course Cloudflare is not, without telling us that DoH takes control away from us so we can't block ads or otherwise decide what we want to allow or block? Is Amazon trying to push everything through just a handful of IPs so that people can't block nefarious content without also blocking legitimate content? If everyone were on-board with what Cloudflare wants, the Internet would be re-centralized around them, and because they don't "host" (which is a special kind of bullshit) and they don't "censor", bad actors will have free reign, so long as Cloudflare is making $$$.
- majke 4y ago
  > If everyone were on-board with what Cloudflare wants, the Internet would be... You got me lost here. Cloudflare is making money by having everyone re-centralized around it? Where is the revenue from?
  - johnklos 4y ago
    Not sure if you're trolling here, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a legitimate question. People asked the same about Facebook and Google. Monopolies can extract money from all sorts of things that appear to not necessarily directly generate revenue. What happens when all the large players are using Cloudflare? They become a monopoly. Businesses small and large can't afford to not use them, because businesses don't want to give the appearance of being at a disadvantage. DDoS gangs will extort money from the holdouts, and it'll just become what businesses use. Cloudflare already has a problem where they block large portions of the Internet and either make it so their access to Cloudflare hosted sites either has to go through CAPTCHAs or outright are blocked. If this starts happening to large ISPs, they'll be in a position where they, the ISPs, will be expected to solve problems of Cloudflare's creation. I bet there'll be paid programs for ISPs where ISPs pay for the privilege to correspond with Cloudflare, agree to be "good" (Cloudflare's definition of good), and will suffer financially (because their traffic will be marginalized) if they don't agree to whatever Cloudflare wants. We're seeing the pieces being assembled now.

bethecloud 4y ago

Best way to compete with Cloudflare is to use decentralized cloud storage options, that are compatible with S3, cheaper, and faster – like storj.io

jcuenod 4y ago
Do you have any connection to storj?
- castis 4y ago
  It would appear that they are either the owner or have some deep relation to it.
  - jcuenod 4y ago
    Yes, that was my not-so-subtle request for a disclosure...
altdataseller 4y ago
CloudFlare already is offering that in R2.

jacooper 4y ago

Cloudflare offers a lot of stuff, if you mean compete on DDOS protection, you best case is host-provider DDOA protection, which won't MITM connections.

melonrusk 4y ago

Gatekeeper ? https://github.com/AltraMayor/gatekeeper/wiki https://github.com/AltraMayor/gatekeeper/wiki

majke 4y ago
This is funny. Cloudflare ddos systems were named: Gatekeeper, gatesetter, gatebot, floodgate, gatewatch :)