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This is a question I have. Why do so many websites have CDNs now? Like it seems that everyone feels like they need to throw their website behind Cloudflare even

This is a question I have. Why do so many websites have CDNs now? Like it seems that everyone feels like they need to throw their website behind Cloudflare even if they are serving content to a relatively confined region. When did everyone decide they needed Cloudflare for everything? Or is this like how you need to use React and SSR even when you have a relatively simple static site, i.e. cargo cutting?

rs999gti 4y ago
> When did everyone decide they needed Cloudflare for everything? I think it was when Reddit and other social link platforms were becoming established, the linked sites would go viral and then the traffic would do an unintended DDOS. Cloudflare and other providers offered free DDOS protection, then it became a defacto standard to have a CDN
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
If you don't buy ddos protect from one of the cartel members one of them will ddos you. Protection racket.
- somehnguy 4y ago
  Are you really implying that Cloudflare, Akamai, Netlify, or other CDNs will DDOS you if you don't sign up for their services..? That's nonsense.
  - Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
    <bane> Of course! </bane>
ranger_danger 4y ago
In addition to what others said (like DDoS protection), having a CDN or proxy up front also shields potential abusers and/or litigants against immediately finding out where the origin servers are physically located.
cesarb 4y ago
> When did everyone decide they needed Cloudflare for everything? When distributed denial-of-service attacks through botnets, sold as a service to anyone by the "owners" of these botnets, became popular. It takes just one person who doesn't like you, or even who wants to take your site down "for the lulz", to cause so much traffic that your site is disabled and removed by your hosting provider as a way to "protect" their other clients. By being widely spread over the global Internet, CDNs like cloudflare have the advantage that each node receives only a small portion of a widely distributed denial-of-service attack, instead of receiving all of it at a single place as would happen without a CDN.
thrashh 4y ago
Paying for DDoS protection sucks then CloudFlare comes along and provides it for free (within reason).
antifa 4y ago
The free version of cloudflare lets you keep secret the IP address of your VPS. It also mitigates the cost of high prices for bandwidth if you use services like AWS/GCP/netlify. You're less likely to go offline if your website is unexpected popular on a random day.

rs999gti 4y ago

> When did everyone decide they needed Cloudflare for everything? I think it was when Reddit and other social link platforms were becoming established, the linked sites would go viral and then the traffic would do an unintended DDOS. Cloudflare and other providers offered free DDOS protection, then it became a defacto standard to have a CDN

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago

If you don't buy ddos protect from one of the cartel members one of them will ddos you. Protection racket.

somehnguy 4y ago
Are you really implying that Cloudflare, Akamai, Netlify, or other CDNs will DDOS you if you don't sign up for their services..? That's nonsense.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
  <bane> Of course! </bane>

ranger_danger 4y ago

In addition to what others said (like DDoS protection), having a CDN or proxy up front also shields potential abusers and/or litigants against immediately finding out where the origin servers are physically located.

cesarb 4y ago

> When did everyone decide they needed Cloudflare for everything? When distributed denial-of-service attacks through botnets, sold as a service to anyone by the "owners" of these botnets, became popular. It takes just one person who doesn't like you, or even who wants to take your site down "for the lulz", to cause so much traffic that your site is disabled and removed by your hosting provider as a way to "protect" their other clients. By being widely spread over the global Internet, CDNs like cloudflare have the advantage that each node receives only a small portion of a widely distributed denial-of-service attack, instead of receiving all of it at a single place as would happen without a CDN.

thrashh 4y ago

Paying for DDoS protection sucks then CloudFlare comes along and provides it for free (within reason).

antifa 4y ago

The free version of cloudflare lets you keep secret the IP address of your VPS. It also mitigates the cost of high prices for bandwidth if you use services like AWS/GCP/netlify. You're less likely to go offline if your website is unexpected popular on a random day.