Any draw backs to using CDN?

S

sross

Active member
I was thinking about trying KeyCDN for my big board. I'm new to CDN so a concern would be some items being cached that are no longer representing what is on the site. For example I edit a template or change a graphic on the site, hit refresh and nothing changes. Or let's say a member uploads a gallery image or new avatar, they hit refresh and an old cached image appears. Is that an issue? Thanks
 
There are some draw backs, but most likely you would never run into those issues. We use Cloudflare (which we love), and if you have something where you allow users to upload really huge files in single old style HTTP form, they will be limited to files no bigger than 500MB.

If that's not an issue for you (and if it is, you are doing something wrong, because you should be using an HTML5 or Flash style uploader anyway), you should be using a CDN. In fact, for the price of $0/month, I think people are generally foolish to *not* use Cloudflare. lol
 
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We use cloudflare as well just for the cdn features using a separate domain. Saves our server from having to send out static assets.
 
RoldanLT said:
It's more than any other CDN.
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For proper CDN services? My understanding is its a lot less than most proper CDN services.
I wouldn't want to give full proxying of all traffic to my site to a free provider, the same as I wouldn't give full content aggregation of my site content to a free provider (*cough* TapaTrash)
I've lost count the number of times I've been to a Cloudflare enabled site only to have Cloudflare report it's giving me content from it's own proxy because the source is unreachable. But if I visit direct.site.com instead, the server appears fine.
 
Mouth said:
For proper CDN services? My understanding is its a lot less than most proper CDN services.
I wouldn't want to give full proxying of all traffic to my site to a free provider, the same as I wouldn't give full content aggregation of my site content to a free provider (*cough* TapaTrash)
I've lost count the number of times I've been to a Cloudflare enabled site only to have Cloudflare report it's giving me content from it's own proxy because the source is unreachable. But if I visit direct.site.com instead, the server appears fine.
Click to expand...
I do not trust cloud flare at all. It has been proven that they do a lot of false positives just to stick their name and logo everywhere.

digitalpoint said:
In fact, for the price of $0/month, I think people are generally foolish to *not* use Cloudflare. lol
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yaaaaa...... I have tried them on their free plan it is horrid. They are not a CDN service on the free plan. more of a proxy.
 
If you are on a fast server and the CDN is slow, then the CDN will slow down your site. I had this issue with MaxCDN.
Cloudfare has had a lot of issues.
 
In my case it improved image load drastically but slowed casual thread browsing on threads without many pictures in them. I've tried all the top CDN (minus enterprise) services out there.... so YMMV
 
Moshe1010 said:
In my case it improved image load drastically but slowed casual thread browsing on threads without many pictures in them. I've tried all the top CDN (minus enterprise) services out there.... so YMMV
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Sounds like a miss configuration? If you're barely using the CDN (threads with not many pictures), then the slowness is likely to come from your source server.
 
Mouth said:
For proper CDN services? My understanding is its a lot less than most proper CDN services.
I wouldn't want to give full proxying of all traffic to my site to a free provider, the same as I wouldn't give full content aggregation of my site content to a free provider (*cough* TapaTrash)
I've lost count the number of times I've been to a Cloudflare enabled site only to have Cloudflare report it's giving me content from it's own proxy because the source is unreachable. But if I visit direct.site.com instead, the server appears fine.
Click to expand...
I agree and I have the same experience.
 
Mouth said:
For proper CDN services? My understanding is its a lot less than most proper CDN services.
I wouldn't want to give full proxying of all traffic to my site to a free provider, the same as I wouldn't give full content aggregation of my site content to a free provider (*cough* TapaTrash)
I've lost count the number of times I've been to a Cloudflare enabled site only to have Cloudflare report it's giving me content from it's own proxy because the source is unreachable. But if I visit direct.site.com instead, the server appears fine.
Click to expand...
The one thing I've seen some sites run into with CloudFlare sounds like it could be exactly what you saw with that site (at least that's a symptom of the issue). Where a server is configured with its own DDoS protection or somewhere upstream at the network level the same thing. Like when someone hears, "Oh DDoS protection, good idea..." I'm But the admin doesn't configure it properly). Lol

So the server ends up seeing a zillion HTTP(S) requests for the same (CloudFlare) IPs and starts blocking the traffic to CloudFlare IPs because it thinks those IPs are attacking it.

On a side-note, anyone who's site is accessible via direct.domain.com really is just plain dumb if they don't want to be DDoSed for real.

That being said, I've been running every site/domain I own through CloudFlare over HTTPS for almost 2 years now... Billions of HTTP requests, and I've never had any issues myself. If some site get CloudFlare origin server errors, I'd almost bet money it's some anti-DDoS system they have in place that's kicking in because of poor configuration.

Also - the site you are on right now uses CloudFlare (xenforo.com). Do you see CF errors popping up here ever?
 
digitalpoint said:
The one thing I've seen some sites run into with CloudFlare sounds like it could be exactly what you saw with that site (at least that's a symptom of the issue). Where a server is configured with its own DDoS protection or somewhere upstream at the network level the same thing. Like when someone hears, "Oh DDoS protection, good idea..." I'm But the admin doesn't configure it properly). Lol

So the server ends up seeing a zillion HTTP(S) requests for the same (CloudFlare) IPs and starts blocking the traffic to CloudFlare IPs because it thinks those IPs are attacking it.

On a side-note, anyone who's site is accessible via direct.domain.com really is just plain dumb if they don't want to be DDoSed for real.

That being said, I've been running every site/domain I own through CloudFlare over HTTPS for almost 2 years now... Billions of HTTP requests, and I've never had any issues myself. If some site get CloudFlare origin server errors, I'd almost bet money it's some anti-DDoS system they have in place that's kicking in because of poor configuration.

Also - the site you are on right now uses CloudFlare (xenforo.com). Do you see CF errors popping up here ever?
Click to expand...

That's probably the main problem with most of the sites.

But I have seen that Cloudflare page several times on your website. Not just a few.
I have also seen it here on this forum last week.
I usually leave the website then and go back later.
 
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