2 ms·

cloudflare is primarily a caching proxy. in order to perform any caching, they would have to have the unencrypted objects. check, mate. It is sad that in this

cloudflare is primarily a caching proxy. in order to perform any caching, they would have to have the unencrypted objects. check, mate. It is sad that in this day and age, when you buy a car you need to sign a legal exclaimer that you understand it requires gasoline to run.

radlad 2y ago
Cloudflare's CDN capabilities are separate from DDOS protection and indeed many requests cannot be cached due to the resources being sensitive (i.e. authenticated requests.) Again, there are many forms of proxies and DDOS protection that do not rely on TLS interception, just as there are cars that do not rely on gasoline. Cloudflare has many less technical home users who use their service to avoid sharing their IP online, avoid DDOS, or access home resources. I do not think the average Internet user is familiar with these concepts. There are many examples of surprised users on subreddits like /r/homelab.
- shwouchk 2y ago
  how would they know what to cache? the response headers from the server are encrypted. there is maybe the high end l3 protection available if you have the resources. the free tier has caching bundled. Also, how would their certificates work if they don’t see content?
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    > how would they know what to cache? That's a weird question to ask to someone that went out of their way to describe a non-caching situation. > Also, how would their certificates work if they don’t see content? Can you be more specific? I'm not sure which feature you're asking about or how it uses certificates. But the answer is likely "that feature isn't necessary to provide DDOS protection".
    - shwouchk 2y ago
      Sorry, they did not go much out of their way, to simply claim “solutions exist”. Sure, you could invent other ways of protecting your traffic but what CF offers in the free tier always includes SSL termination with their own certificates (if you enable ssl), and always includes caching.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        > invent other ways Just turning off some features gets them just about there. It wouldn't take rearchitecting things. Those features being bundled by default means very little for the difficulty.
        shwouchk 2y ago
        So you too, are saying “its possible” as proof of your argument. Which itself shifted from complaining that you aren’t warned that coffee is hot, to - after implicitly agreeing that it should be obvious it’s hot - complaining that it they didn’t have to make it as hot. Great! Offer an alternative! Everyone would be more than happy.
        Dylan16807 2y ago
        Not that it's "possible", that it requires them to add nothing new. That is a much much easier to reach bar. It's like if a restaurant sells cheeseburgers, and I want a hamburger. "How do they figure out ~~what~to~cache~~ the cheese to ketchup ratio without adding cheese?" They can just skip that part. I'm not asking for sushi and supporting that by saying "sushi is possible".
        shwouchk 2y ago
        So you agree that your argument has shifted from complaining about inadequate disclosure that coffee contains caffeine, to complaints about lack of decaf offerings. It would also be trivial for google and facebook to turn off all ads and logging of your activity. They would need to do strictly less than they do now. It would benefit all users too! In CF case they would have to build a completely different infrastructure to detect bots using different technology to what they have now, including different ways around false positives for legitimate users. While perhaps nothing new in the sense that you claim “this is possible”, i see no one else offering this mythical “possible” product. I would be the first in line to your offering of free cheeseless hamburgers. Where do i sign up?

radlad 2y ago

Cloudflare's CDN capabilities are separate from DDOS protection and indeed many requests cannot be cached due to the resources being sensitive (i.e. authenticated requests.) Again, there are many forms of proxies and DDOS protection that do not rely on TLS interception, just as there are cars that do not rely on gasoline. Cloudflare has many less technical home users who use their service to avoid sharing their IP online, avoid DDOS, or access home resources. I do not think the average Internet user is familiar with these concepts. There are many examples of surprised users on subreddits like /r/homelab.

shwouchk 2y ago
how would they know what to cache? the response headers from the server are encrypted. there is maybe the high end l3 protection available if you have the resources. the free tier has caching bundled. Also, how would their certificates work if they don’t see content?
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  > how would they know what to cache? That's a weird question to ask to someone that went out of their way to describe a non-caching situation. > Also, how would their certificates work if they don’t see content? Can you be more specific? I'm not sure which feature you're asking about or how it uses certificates. But the answer is likely "that feature isn't necessary to provide DDOS protection".
  - shwouchk 2y ago
    Sorry, they did not go much out of their way, to simply claim “solutions exist”. Sure, you could invent other ways of protecting your traffic but what CF offers in the free tier always includes SSL termination with their own certificates (if you enable ssl), and always includes caching.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      > invent other ways Just turning off some features gets them just about there. It wouldn't take rearchitecting things. Those features being bundled by default means very little for the difficulty.
      - shwouchk 2y ago
        So you too, are saying “its possible” as proof of your argument. Which itself shifted from complaining that you aren’t warned that coffee is hot, to - after implicitly agreeing that it should be obvious it’s hot - complaining that it they didn’t have to make it as hot. Great! Offer an alternative! Everyone would be more than happy.
        Dylan16807 2y ago
        Not that it's "possible", that it requires them to add nothing new. That is a much much easier to reach bar. It's like if a restaurant sells cheeseburgers, and I want a hamburger. "How do they figure out ~~what~to~cache~~ the cheese to ketchup ratio without adding cheese?" They can just skip that part. I'm not asking for sushi and supporting that by saying "sushi is possible".
        shwouchk 2y ago
        So you agree that your argument has shifted from complaining about inadequate disclosure that coffee contains caffeine, to complaints about lack of decaf offerings. It would also be trivial for google and facebook to turn off all ads and logging of your activity. They would need to do strictly less than they do now. It would benefit all users too! In CF case they would have to build a completely different infrastructure to detect bots using different technology to what they have now, including different ways around false positives for legitimate users. While perhaps nothing new in the sense that you claim “this is possible”, i see no one else offering this mythical “possible” product. I would be the first in line to your offering of free cheeseless hamburgers. Where do i sign up?