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We tried to use Cloudflare when they teamed with Dreamhost a few months ago. We had more downtime than uptime.... Though this is super-relevant because during

We tried to use Cloudflare when they teamed with Dreamhost a few months ago. We had more downtime than uptime.... Though this is super-relevant because during the struggle with Cloudflare, we released an article about LOIC and how easy it is to reveal the locations and identities of individuals involved in a DDoS attack using LOIC. http://www.thepowerbase.com/2012/03/low-orbit-ion-cannon-exposed/ http://www.thepowerbase.com/2012/03/low-orbit-ion-cannon-exp...

maskedinvader 14y ago
that was an interesting read, thanks
eastdakota 14y ago
Sorry for the trouble you had. Did you submit a support ticket to CloudFlare? Sounds like something was blocking requests from our network. LOIC and a number of the more public DDoS tools make the attackers' identities relatively easy to track. The big attack we saw last Saturday is much more difficult to trace both because it is originated with a UDP request (the headers of which can be forged) and because it is reflected off open resolvers (essentially laundering the identity of the attack's source).
- glazemaster 14y ago
  Honestly we were confused by the whole partnership. We kept submitting tickets to Dreamhost which they did a poor job of fulfilling. We liked the idea of Cloudflare and we were mostly willing to stick it out. Not only that, but we had several great ideas about how we might leverage your offering against some other things that we wanted to accomplish. The real reason that we stopped using Cloudflare is that when you were unable to serve the cached page, it throws up a Cloudflare branded page. We thought that those sorts of error pages would diminish our image as an open source publication because it seems to suggest that we can't rely on our own tools and abilities. If we were able to display a "Powerbase" branded 404 type page, we would have been more satisfied.
  - eastdakota 14y ago
    If you're a paying customer, you can fully customize the error pages. Probably easiest if you just sign up directly through us if you want to do something like that. We can get you setup: http://www.cloudflare.com/sign-up http://www.cloudflare.com/sign-up
    - glazemaster 14y ago
      We will consider it. Thanks for letting me know!
- buro9 14y ago
  I also had problems when I tried CloudFlare. Different problems, but it cost me a few days contacting users and apologising before I U-turned and switched the nameservers back. I unfortunately use PayPal and their Instant Notification thing, basically a callback to a web page with a POST about the transaction that just happened. Upon receiving the POST I can then do things like notify the customer, dispatch goods, award virtual goods, etc. The problem I had was that after putting my website (in the London Linode datacenter) behind CloudFlare, PayPal started randomly failing to reach the callback page. PayPal, being PayPal, failed silently for a few days before finally sending an email to say that they couldn't notify me of transactions. I figured it out just before that though, because users were getting the CloudFlare "site offline" message. The pages on my site are 100% dynamic, so nothing was cached by the feature that keeps a site online. My biggest problem with CloudFlare was visibility for debugging: I had no visibility. If it wasn't for my users letting me know and PayPal emailing me confirming what I thought... I wouldn't have known. Even then it took too long to find out, over a week from when it started to fail silently. According to Linode there was no downtime in that period, and according to my server logs load was never above average and there was no reason it should've been unable to be reached. Did I submit a ticket? I submitted some questions beforehand and got back answers that were very friendly but not technically detailed. That's also how I found the interface, I couldn't debug using CloudFlare, no way to answer the questions "What is happening? Why is it happening?". So no, when I figured it out I wasn't going to stay with CloudFlare as even if it was resolved I would still lack visibility for future problem-solving. In the end it was costing me goodwill with my users. I wanted things you didn't provide: How often did CloudFlare fail to contact my network? Can I see a chart of such failures over time? What were the failure error codes and times so that I can cross-reference them to my logs? Basically: I wanted transparency so I could have confidence in the service, and detail so that I can debug failures when they occur. And I was going to email this as it's really a "just to let you know". But you have no email in your HN profile, and looking through the support emails I had I see tenderapp.com and can't make a guess what your email address may be, and I pinged you on Twitter but no response and it's very late here... so posting it so you can see. If you add ways for developers to debug issues when using CloudFlare then I may well be tempted back in the future. The fundamental premise is a good one and I really wanted it to work (paid for the Enterprise level, had every intention of using it). But when failing silently costs real money and customer goodwill, I don't feel I had a choice but to U-turn very rapidly. As soon as I was off CloudFlare, PayPal Instant Payment Notification worked again and there hasn't been a single failure since.
mtgx 14y ago
From my experience with both Dreamhost and Hostgator, Hostgator is a much better service overall, and more uptime, too.
- meritt 14y ago
  Why would you arbitrarily mention Hostgator? Shilling? Yes, Dreamhost sucks. So does Hostgator. So does every other oversold host.

maskedinvader 14y ago

that was an interesting read, thanks

eastdakota 14y ago

Sorry for the trouble you had. Did you submit a support ticket to CloudFlare? Sounds like something was blocking requests from our network. LOIC and a number of the more public DDoS tools make the attackers' identities relatively easy to track. The big attack we saw last Saturday is much more difficult to trace both because it is originated with a UDP request (the headers of which can be forged) and because it is reflected off open resolvers (essentially laundering the identity of the attack's source).

glazemaster 14y ago
Honestly we were confused by the whole partnership. We kept submitting tickets to Dreamhost which they did a poor job of fulfilling. We liked the idea of Cloudflare and we were mostly willing to stick it out. Not only that, but we had several great ideas about how we might leverage your offering against some other things that we wanted to accomplish. The real reason that we stopped using Cloudflare is that when you were unable to serve the cached page, it throws up a Cloudflare branded page. We thought that those sorts of error pages would diminish our image as an open source publication because it seems to suggest that we can't rely on our own tools and abilities. If we were able to display a "Powerbase" branded 404 type page, we would have been more satisfied.
- eastdakota 14y ago
  If you're a paying customer, you can fully customize the error pages. Probably easiest if you just sign up directly through us if you want to do something like that. We can get you setup: http://www.cloudflare.com/sign-up http://www.cloudflare.com/sign-up
  - glazemaster 14y ago
    We will consider it. Thanks for letting me know!
buro9 14y ago
I also had problems when I tried CloudFlare. Different problems, but it cost me a few days contacting users and apologising before I U-turned and switched the nameservers back. I unfortunately use PayPal and their Instant Notification thing, basically a callback to a web page with a POST about the transaction that just happened. Upon receiving the POST I can then do things like notify the customer, dispatch goods, award virtual goods, etc. The problem I had was that after putting my website (in the London Linode datacenter) behind CloudFlare, PayPal started randomly failing to reach the callback page. PayPal, being PayPal, failed silently for a few days before finally sending an email to say that they couldn't notify me of transactions. I figured it out just before that though, because users were getting the CloudFlare "site offline" message. The pages on my site are 100% dynamic, so nothing was cached by the feature that keeps a site online. My biggest problem with CloudFlare was visibility for debugging: I had no visibility. If it wasn't for my users letting me know and PayPal emailing me confirming what I thought... I wouldn't have known. Even then it took too long to find out, over a week from when it started to fail silently. According to Linode there was no downtime in that period, and according to my server logs load was never above average and there was no reason it should've been unable to be reached. Did I submit a ticket? I submitted some questions beforehand and got back answers that were very friendly but not technically detailed. That's also how I found the interface, I couldn't debug using CloudFlare, no way to answer the questions "What is happening? Why is it happening?". So no, when I figured it out I wasn't going to stay with CloudFlare as even if it was resolved I would still lack visibility for future problem-solving. In the end it was costing me goodwill with my users. I wanted things you didn't provide: How often did CloudFlare fail to contact my network? Can I see a chart of such failures over time? What were the failure error codes and times so that I can cross-reference them to my logs? Basically: I wanted transparency so I could have confidence in the service, and detail so that I can debug failures when they occur. And I was going to email this as it's really a "just to let you know". But you have no email in your HN profile, and looking through the support emails I had I see tenderapp.com and can't make a guess what your email address may be, and I pinged you on Twitter but no response and it's very late here... so posting it so you can see. If you add ways for developers to debug issues when using CloudFlare then I may well be tempted back in the future. The fundamental premise is a good one and I really wanted it to work (paid for the Enterprise level, had every intention of using it). But when failing silently costs real money and customer goodwill, I don't feel I had a choice but to U-turn very rapidly. As soon as I was off CloudFlare, PayPal Instant Payment Notification worked again and there hasn't been a single failure since.

mtgx 14y ago

From my experience with both Dreamhost and Hostgator, Hostgator is a much better service overall, and more uptime, too.

meritt 14y ago
Why would you arbitrarily mention Hostgator? Shilling? Yes, Dreamhost sucks. So does Hostgator. So does every other oversold host.