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[DigitalPoint] App for Cloudflare® 1.8.2

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I compare "Requests by country" and "Data Centers" figures in Analytics/Traffic.

The majority of visitors are coming from the country being first in the "Requests by country" list. That's 1.37M requests.

"Data Centers" list shows the following:
  • First data center is further away when measuring distance from visitors to origin server; it's 1800 km away from top visitors, having 620k requests
  • Second in the list is data center closer to visitors than the origin server; it's 600 km away from top visitors, having 552k requests
  • Third data center is in the country of majority of visitors, having 362k requests.
Meaning 45% of visitors are seeing content slower than from origin server and 26% of visitors are getting content ultra fast.
 
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Like I mentioned earlier, the physically closest data center doesn't necessarily mean it's the fastest.

For sake of argument, let's say there's one data center in Germany, but for whatever reason, that data center is peered/backhauling traffic through Spain. Maybe a user in Germany is routed through a data center in Belgium because a route to the data center in Germany might go through France, then Spain and then back to Germany in this case, where Belgium might be a shorter hop back to Germany.

Take another more local example... you are physically standing next to the data center on your cell phone. You are so close, you can literally reach out and touch the building. However, a network connection there from your cell phone goes through a cell tower, then backhauled to the cell company's regional POP, then that is routed to NOC, which might be peered to an unrelated network provider, which then sends the traffic to a different NOC that is peered with the physical data center you are standing next to. Physical proximity doesn't mean your network traffic somehow magically gets straight it (in my example maybe your network traffic had to take a 1500 km physical route to get into the building you can touch).

That's just some examples of what can (and often) happens with network routing. In an ideal world, every data center and NOC are interconnected with every other data center/NOC in the world, but that's also an impossibility. The best you can do as a data center is constantly improve your interconnections/peering (usually focusing on the worst routes).

Also, Google has a physical data center in Las Vegas as well, but when I'm physically in Las Vegas I connect to Google's Los Angeles data center... again... same thing. The network route is faster to go to Los Angeles in that case than it is to go to the Vegas data center for whatever reason (peering in Las Vegas probably isn't as great as it is in Los Angeles... same reason I hit a Cloudflare data center in Los Angeles). It has nothing to do with them forcing a bad route to you because of your plan.

Back to your original question though, you can test basic data center routing of a Free vs. Enterprise domain, and I've never (ever) seen a case where they are routed to different data centers from the same device at the same time based on domain. The way Anycast works is the network equipment (before anything even gets to Cloudflare) is routing the user's traffic to the fastest data center for them.

If you are really that worried about it and you think Cloudflare is giving your users bad network routes, it's easy enough to turn off the Cloudflare proxy and see if your site gets faster for users somehow.
 
But how do you explain this:
If you would like your zone to always be served by the closest geographic colo and the highest priority of traffic, please consider upgrading to the enterprise plan by filling out an Enterprise Request Form.
Does that mean that if I have money I can always communicate directly to the data center building I'm standing next to?
 
But how do you explain this:

Does that mean that if I have money I can always communicate directly to the data center building I'm standing next to?
I didn't write it, I can't explain it, because it's not possible at the most fundamental level. At least not without making it slower for you. If you want your network traffic to take a slower route because it terminates at a physically closest location, I suppose you could pay extra for that if you want (they don't say that option is faster, just physically closer). 🤷🏻‍♂️

Traffic from me to cloudflare.com (which I assume they aren't intentionally making their own site slower) goes to the 9th closest data center for me. The closest data center doesn't mean it's the fastest for any network connection... it might be, but not always.

Test it for yourself and see what data center you are routed to when you go to cloudflare.com (it will be the fastest option, not necessarily the closest... it might be the closest, but that's not for certain because all data centers in the world aren't peered to every possible ISP/NOC/data center in the world).

Either way, this thread is about the Cloudflare add-on, not the Cloudflare service. If you want to get your questions answered by Cloudflare employees about their service, your best bet is to go here: https://community.cloudflare.com/
 
Either way, this thread is about the Cloudflare add-on, not the Cloudflare service. If you want to get your questions answered by Cloudflare employees about their service, your best bet is to go here: https://community.cloudflare.com/
Yup @ivp you'd want to ask on Cloudflare's community forums https://community.cloudflare.com/ specifically. Though they'd tell you exactly what I mentioned in my blog post https://blog.centminmod.com/2022/05/19/2794/what-are-the-benefits-of-using-cloudflare-business-plan/. I'm currently using Cloudflare Enterprise plan for my forum, Wordpress blog and sites :D
 
digitalpoint updated [DigitalPoint] Cloudflare with a new update entry:

Adds ability to block automated spam registrations

  • New User registration option: Registration form is an overlay
  • Added ability to auto-configure Cloudflare firewall filter rule to force new registrations to go through managed challenge (helps mitigate automated spam registrations)
  • Adds 24 solve rate metrics for firewall filter rules (needs new "Zone.Analytics: Read" permission)
IMPORTANT for existing users: The new solve rate metric requires a new permission for the API Token...

Read the rest of this update entry...
 
Register using telegram is a publicly available add-on or private 😀
It's private... the register part is really just a very small part of that add-on and it's really just too complicated to turn loose without completely gutting it (more work than I want to do).

It's a never ending list of things that add-on does for me...

It also allows users to receive alerts:

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Does two-step verification:

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It allows users to upload documents via Telegram to prove identity (reads bars codes on drivers licenses and other things).

It allows users to have conversations with Telegram bots for certain things.

It can manage Telegram accounts via a custom MadelineProto daemon:

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It can manage Telegram channels for users behind the scenes:

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It does a lot of things and has a some dependencies on some other custom things for it to fully work. So ya... too much work to try and dumb it down for others. :)
 
If you guys want to see how the new option that forces a Cloudflare challenge for registration pages, it's enabled on both of these sites of mine (hit Register on either of them to see it in action):


Doing the same thing to the contact us page helps stop contact us spam; it may be worth adding as an option.
 
Doing the same thing to the contact us page helps stop contact us spam; it may be worth adding as an option.
Yep, it's already been added to the next version (slipped my mind initially because I've never had spam come via contact form personally). Either way, it's part of the next version and you just just hit the button again if you already set it up for just registration and it will update the existing rule (won't create a new one unnecessarily).

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digitalpoint updated [DigitalPoint] Cloudflare with a new update entry:

Adds ability to force a challenge for contact form and use Cloudflare Worker as unfurl proxy

The option to Force registration challenge added in version 1.1.1 has been extended to optionally apply to the contact form as well. If you already created the managed challenge for registrations you can click the option again to toggle on/off the contact form option (it will update the existing rule).

View attachment 271612

Using Cloudflare Workers as an image proxy was added in version 1.1.0. Now you can also use Cloudflare Workers as an unfurl...

Read the rest of this update entry...
 
Have had a couple people ask if the image proxy function would work with XenForo Cloud... I don't have XenForo Cloud, but as long as it allows you to install an add-on, it should work. I think the question was more geared towards the XenForo Cloud's inability to edit the config.php file and add the $config['http']['proxy'] option.

This add-on shims the image proxy in via a normal class extension, so you don't need to edit the config.php file for the image proxy to work (I guess if that's the underlying question?)...
 
I have a small bug.
I wanted to activate WAF, but I got an error that I am not allowed to. So far so good.
But the Button was still in "on" position. It would be good, if it goes back to old state in case of an error.
 
Does it cover all of these features?
  • Image & Link Proxy
  • Auto Link Title
It should not change any underlying functionality. The only thing it changes is the URL XenForo fetches directly (uses a proxy URL instead of the direct URL). The code that processes the results of the fetch is left unchanged. So yes, everything should keep working.

I have a small bug.
I wanted to activate WAF, but I got an error that I am not allowed to. So far so good.
But the Button was still in "on" position. It would be good, if it goes back to old state in case of an error.
Are you talking about on the Settings page?
 
when have a spare time, look at the HTTPS3 via UDP only. cloudflare said they released it, but not actually works.
if you manage to get it work, I can bring at least 1000 customers to XF.

the point is: government block websites via TCP
 
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