What is Cloudflare ? How does it help webmasters ?

Hi, so cloudflare does sound quite good.
Anyone using it? In particular I'm concerned about the following:
1) 'laggy' cache and old version of pages being presented to some users with no way for me to know
2) impact on having just 'one IP' connecting to my site (is there an impact on banning user ? internal stats?)
3) impact on google analytics

Anyone knows?
 
Shamufish said:
Hi, so cloudflare does sound quite good.
Anyone using it? In particular I'm concerned about the following:
1) 'laggy' cache and old version of pages being presented to some users with no way for me to know
2) impact on having just 'one IP' connecting to my site (is there an impact on banning user ? internal stats?)
3) impact on google analytics

Anyone knows?
Click to expand...
my experience:
1) hasnt happened that i am aware of, and i have enabled the 'aggressive cache' at that.
2) after making the cfg change outlined in this thread, xf seems to be aware of users' real ip addresses, but it doesnt share that information with me. all i ever see are cloudflare ip addresses. its odd, because while many users do appear to share the same cloudflare ips, 'spam cleaner' still seems to function as it should when looking for duplicate ip addresses.
there is also an apache module thats supposed to help with ip addresses, but i havent had any success in getting that running.
3) none that i have seen.
 
the speed issue is questionable though.
the first time i tried cloudflare the site slowed considerably, and i got much negative feedback from members. so i removed it.
i did some tests and concluded that having htaccess rules slows down cloudflare. i moved most of the rules into httpd.conf and tried cloudflare again. i havent gotten any complaints from members yet (its been 4 days now) but the site seems more sluggish to me. its possible that the fact i am in australia has something to do with this?
 
Shamufish said:
Hi, so cloudflare does sound quite good.
Anyone using it? In particular I'm concerned about the following:
1) 'laggy' cache and old version of pages being presented to some users with no way for me to know
2) impact on having just 'one IP' connecting to my site (is there an impact on banning user ? internal stats?)
3) impact on google analytics

Anyone knows?
Click to expand...
3)https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/google_analytics
2)If you install mod_cloudflare you will be fine I also think it might be necessary to install the xenforo code snippet(into config.php)
1)Never happened to me, you can set aggressive or basic if your worried

PS. You like how I went backwards?
 
"its possible that the fact i am in australia has something to do with this?"
Yes, notably if most of your visitors are from AU. While our Singapore datacenter will help with traffic, which we're still making refinements to, it is likely that a good number of site visitors are getting routed to the USA. If you have most of your visitors in other regions (USA, EU, Asia), then they should see things fly pretty quickly. Our full list of datacenters is on our 'System Status' page on the site's footer.
 
"1) 'laggy' cache and old version of pages being presented to some users with no way for me to know
2) impact on having just 'one IP' connecting to my site (is there an impact on banning user ? internal stats?)
3) impact on google analytics"

1. You need to go to 'Development Mode' if you make changes to static content (settings->CloudFlare settings->Development Mode) to bypass the cache.
2 Installing mod_cloudflare would resolve this.
3. No impact because that is between your visitor and your site. Our reporting numbers will actually generally be higher than GA because we don't rely on JS for our reports.

Note: CloudFlare's list of datacenters can be found here.
 
Shamufish said:
Hi, so cloudflare does sound quite good.
Anyone using it? In particular I'm concerned about the following:
1) 'laggy' cache and old version of pages being presented to some users with no way for me to know
2) impact on having just 'one IP' connecting to my site (is there an impact on banning user ? internal stats?)
3) impact on google analytics

Anyone knows?
Click to expand...

New Cloudflare user here and totally happy with the results.
1. Not on mine
2. Not on mine
3. Not on mine

Page speed improved from 6-7 seconds on first view (webpagetest.org, Dulles VA, IE8, DSL) to 4-5 seconds. And repeat views from 1-2 seconds to sub 1 seconds to 1++ seconds.

Love it.

Using the Cloudflare Free with Minify options turned on for all three JS, CSS, HTML, Aggressive caching, low security with Wordpress' W3TC and Amazon Cloudfront CDN. Thinking of experimenting turning off the CDN and perhaps going to PRO version if everything is stable in the next few weeks.

BTW, this XenForo interface is REALLY nice.
 
i have to say my asian visitors are still being routed to usa servers, this doesnt make any useful service since i have my server located in asia, it wouldnt make any sense having my useres redirected to usa at all

</cloudflare service>
 
maidos said:
i have to say my asian visitors are still being routed to usa servers, this doesnt make any useful service since i have my server located in asia, it wouldnt make any sense having my useres redirected to usa at all

</cloudflare service>
Click to expand...

Definitely need more servers in Asia and Australia. Even CDNs tend to be heavily biased toward the US.
 
a legacy reborn said:
3)https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/google_analytics
2)If you install mod_cloudflare you will be fine I also think it might be necessary to install the xenforo code snippet(into config.php)
1)Never happened to me, you can set aggressive or basic if your worried

PS. You like how I went backwards?
Click to expand...

I love how you went backwards :p

2) I don't use Apache, am I out of luck? I need to be able to ban users based on IP!
3) I need to install an app to have access to Google analytics?
1) OK

:)
 
"Definitely need more servers in Asia and Australia. Even CDNs tend to be heavily biased toward the US."

Hi,

Traceroutes from your machine to your domain (while on CloudFlare) would be very helpful. The network engineer can fix some of these issues (routing in Asia is a nightmare, and it often depends on the network service provider).
 
Shamufish said:
I love how you went backwards :p

2) I don't use Apache, am I out of luck? I need to be able to ban users based on IP!
3) I need to install an app to have access to Google analytics?
1) OK

:)
Click to expand...

2. This should work as well for XenForo.
3.) I need to install an app to have access to Google analytics?
You need to have a Google Analytics account (if not, you can create one). The CloudFlare app just makes it easier to make sure Google Analytics is added to all of your pages.
1. You bet.
 
I'm just curious, can Cloudflare replace the function of a pure CDN like Amazon's CloudFront? I am going to try do some tests to see if I still need the CloudFront, but I'm just curious on what the others are doing. :)

By the way, yesterday Google told me that I had 14,000 pageviews, while CloudFlare reported 33,000 pageviews. That's a big discrepancy and I am not sure who to believe now. :confused:

Here is what webpagetest.org tells me about my site:

Friday Jul 1 08:06:07 2011, Median of 5 Runs

Wordpress + W3TC + CloudFlare + No Amazon CDN
Location - First View - Repeat View
Dulles, VA - IE8 - DSL - 4.782 - 2.322
Frankfurt, DE - IE8 - DSL - 7.865 - 3.973
Singapore - IE8 - DSL - 6.391 - 4.201
Sydney, AU - IE7 - DSL - 13.754 - 4.700
London, UK - IE8 - DSL - 5.845 - 2.877
Hong Kong, China - IE9 - DSL - 5.843 - 3.030

Wordpress + W3TC + CloudFlare + Amazon CDN
Location - First View - Repeat View
Dulles, VA - IE8 - DSL - 4.907 - 1.609
Frankfurt, DE - IE8 - DSL - 8.237 - 3.281
Singapore - IE8 - DSL - 9.045 - 4.041
Sydney, AU - IE7 - DSL - 13.997 - 3.120
London, UK - IE8 - DSL - 5.230 - 2.330
Hong Kong, China - IE9 - DSL - 6.204 - 3.234

Fri Jul 1 19:06:58 2011, Median of 10 Runs

Wordpress + W3TC + CloudFlare + Amazon CDN
Location - First View - Repeat View
Dulles, VA - IE8 - DSL - 4.909 - 1.437
Frankfurt, DE - IE7 - DSL - 10.784 - 3.375
Singapore - IE8 - DSL - 9.480 - 3.832
Sydney, AU - IE7 - DSL - 10.993 - 3.003
London, UK - IE7 - DSL - 9.962 - 2.796
Hong Kong, China - IE9 - DSL - 8.186 - 4.518

Wordpress + W3TC + CloudFlare + No Amazon CDN
Location - First View - Repeat View
Dulles, VA - IE8 - DSL - 4.846 - 2.351
Frankfurt, DE - IE7 - DSL - 13.860 - 4.056
Singapore - IE8 - DSL - 7.168 - 4.268
Sydney, AU - IE7 - DSL - 14.786 - 4.849
London, UK - IE7 - DSL - 12.629 - 3.634
Hong Kong, China - IE9 - DSL - 6.731 - 3.789

It seems that the Amazon CDN slows down first page load times on some locations (Dulles, Frankfurt, Singapore, Sydney, Hong Kong), but speeds up repeat views almost uniformly across the board.

I'm going to try to run the test again a few hours from now and see how things are.

Interestingly,
CloudFlare was activated on my site 2 days ago. Now Google Analytics tell me that one day after I installed CloudFlare:
  • Visitor count remain the same.
  • Pageviews went up 190% from 2.7 pages/visitors to 4.1 pages/visitors.
  • AVG Time on site was the same
  • Bounce Rate went down from 60% to 31%
If that trend continues in the future, I'm going to be a very very happy CloudFlare user. (y)
 
damoncloudflare said:
"Definitely need more servers in Asia and Australia. Even CDNs tend to be heavily biased toward the US."

Hi,

Traceroutes from your machine to your domain (while on CloudFlare) would be very helpful. The network engineer can fix some of these issues (routing in Asia is a nightmare, and it often depends on the network service provider).
Click to expand...

Thanks. :)

Here are the links to the traceroutes:
To Singapore: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/110701_RF_YWS5/
Taipei: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/110701_GD_YWS6/
Sydney: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/110701_AH_YWS9/
Hong Kong: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/110701_B1_YWSN/
Seoul: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/110701_PP_YWSQ/
Wellington: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/110701_FT_YWT0/

Looks like the requests are being handled from Hong Kong for the Asia/Australia region? (y)
 
performance from melbourne australia is dismal.
direct is located in atlanta, ga

cloudflare
Code: 
  1    2 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  mygateway1.ar7 [10.1.1.1]
  2    23 ms    22 ms    22 ms  meb801.ba.optusnet.com.au [198.142.129.44]
  3    22 ms    21 ms    22 ms  meb4-ge5-1.gw.optusnet.com.au [198.142.144.93]
  4    39 ms    38 ms    38 ms  sbr5-ge6-1-0-904.gw.optusnet.com.au [211.29.125.118]
  5    37 ms    36 ms    36 ms  sbr2-ge13-0.gw.optusnet.com.au [211.29.126.1]
  6  190 ms  190 ms  191 ms  203.208.131.113
  7  190 ms  191 ms  191 ms  203.208.182.105
  8  190 ms  190 ms  190 ms  203.208.182.106
  9  191 ms  214 ms  191 ms  ge-1-0-0-0.laxow-dr2.ix.singtel.com [203.208.149.254]
10  192 ms  192 ms  191 ms  ge-0-0-0-0.laxow-dr1.ix.singtel.com [203.208.171.65]
11  420 ms  419 ms  420 ms  203.208.171.130
12  419 ms    *      418 ms  203.208.153.201
13  366 ms  422 ms  421 ms  203.208.186.98
14  423 ms  423 ms  422 ms  CDF-0002.gw1.hkg4.asianetcom.net [202.147.17.182]
15  422 ms  422 ms  567 ms  CDF-0002.gw1.hkg4.asianetcom.net [202.147.17.182]
16  631 ms  422 ms  421 ms  gotvirtual.net [199.27.134.46]

direct
Code: 
  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  mygateway1.ar7 [10.1.1.1]
  2    22 ms    22 ms    21 ms  meb801.ba.optusnet.com.au [198.142.129.44]
  3    22 ms    22 ms    21 ms  meb4-ge5-1.gw.optusnet.com.au [198.142.144.93]
  4    38 ms    39 ms    38 ms  sbr5-ge6-1-0-904.gw.optusnet.com.au [211.29.125.118]
  5    36 ms    36 ms    37 ms  sbr2-ge13-0.gw.optusnet.com.au [211.29.126.1]
  6  195 ms  194 ms  195 ms  203.208.192.205
  7  195 ms  194 ms  194 ms  ge6-0-128.ir1.paloalto-ca.us.xo.net [206.111.12.45]
  8  215 ms  222 ms  199 ms  te0-11-4-0.rar3.sanjose-ca.us.xo.net [207.88.12.181]
  9  256 ms  249 ms  254 ms  te-3-0-0.rar3.la-ca.us.xo.net [207.88.12.62]
10  251 ms  250 ms  251 ms  vb15.rar3.dallas-tx.us.xo.net [207.88.12.45]
11  248 ms  248 ms  250 ms  te0 [207.88.12.1]
12  248 ms  249 ms  248 ms  ae0d0.mcr1.smyrna-ga.us.xo.net [216.156.0.66]
13  247 ms  246 ms  246 ms  209.118.220.46
14  246 ms  246 ms  246 ms  64.22.106.14
15  246 ms  247 ms  246 ms  gotvirtual.net [173.230.135.216]

the numbers cant even reflect how bad it is. overlays timing out, etc.
 
I think what may have happened is that the site is fast enough for the US-based users and so a 20% drop in speed may not be too noticeable if they are not using stopwatches. :rolleyes: After all it looks like a fairly simple and lightweight XF site.

On the other hand, performance in Asia, and even more Australia definitely needs to be improved a big deal -- but like all businesses, CloudFlare would probably invest where it counts the most -- and at the moment it's probably Asia and Europe after the US.

Still I'm a newbie in all these stuff so I may be wrong. :whistle:
 

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