Cloudflare Overview

Cloudflare is a hosted service that provides a number of services, including Content Delivery Network (CDN), SSL, DDoS protection, DNS cloaking/proxy, and live exploit protection for certain vulnerabilities. 

This service is widely used and very popular for added performance and security.

While Cloudflare is a 3rd party service, it is used frequently by integrating its services with existing hosting providers.  

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Cloudflare Functionality

• Cloudflare uses a network of servers to improve the security, performance, and reliability of websites and applications 
• Reverse proxy is used to apply various rules and configuration changes to optimize performance and security by allowing requests to flow through the Cloudflare network instead of directly from the origin server 

Content Delivery Network 

• Cloudflare CDN, or Content Delivery Network, is a globally distributed network of servers designed to accelerate the delivery of web content, including static and dynamic resources
• A key goal is to minimize the distance between a website's server and the end user, resulting in faster load times, reduced latency, and improved overall performance
• Cloudflare CDN utilizes caching for static assets on its servers, reducing the load on the origin server and decreasing the time required to load a webpage
• Various optimization techniques, such as minification and image compression, are also available to enhance load times further and improve user experience

DNS Proxy

• Cloudflare DNS Proxy is a service that acts as an intermediary between users' devices and the DNS servers responsible for resolving domain names into IP addresses
• By routing DNS queries through Cloudflare's globally distributed network of servers, DNS Proxy improves the speed of DNS resolution while also providing additional security features
• This service will mask the IP address of the origin server and use Cloudflare-associated IP addresses instead
• Traffic proxied through Cloudflare benefits from CDN performance gains as well as added security due to malicious traffic being blocked before reaching the origin web server

DDoS Protection

• Cloudflare DDoS protection is a suite of security measures designed to defend websites against DDoS attacks by filtering out malicious traffic and allowing legitimate requests to reach the server
• A key benefit related to Cloudflare DDoS mitigation services is the proactive approach to help mitigate the issue instead of a reactive approach, which is useful for sites that are frequently targeted
• Cloudflare DDoS protection combines advanced traffic analysis, rate limiting, challenge mechanisms, and automatic IP blocking to help mitigate denial of service attacks 

SSL 

• Cloudflare provides free SSL certificates to help secure traffic and encrypt data for websites and applications 
• Free Universal SSL provided by Cloudflare offers basic encryption, validating the domain ownership
• Cloudflare also has options for Dedicated SSL for added security and validation, as well as Custom SSL options

NOTE: For more information on Cloudflare services, it is recommended to review official documentation related to topics of interest.