At the time, I was running a game service, so had a fair number of script kiddies attempting whatever. Expecting them, before using Cloudflare I got a hardware

At the time, I was running a game service, so had a fair number of script kiddies attempting whatever. Expecting them, before using Cloudflare I got a hardware firewall. With a bit of research I located the same hardware firewall used by Federal Reserve Banks. At that time, an outright purchase of that thing was $24K, but it was well worth it. It had every bell and whistle one could ask: deep pack inspection, load balancing, and a quite a bit more. When I closed, that hardware firewall sold for the same price I paid, years earlier.