Cloudflare CDN

Cloudflare is a CDN or Content Delivery Network that sits between your domain name and your website host server to offer enhanced speed and security. 

In your Cloudflare account, you import the DNS for your domain name and then point the nameservers at your domain name registrar to Cloudflare.  By doing so it means all traffic to your domain is then intercepted by Cloudlfare.  By having all incoming traffic pass through Cloudflare's servers, it allows all of the traffic to be 'analysed' and 'managed'. 

Since Cloudflare intercepts and monitors a large amount of traffic across many millions of domain names, it can provide large scale protection against attacks from common 'bots', 'malicious scripts' and 'bad crawlers' that are increasing in severity across the net and that are constantly scouring the web for vulnerabilities to exploit.

Cloudflare also grabs copies (cache) of your website files and serves them to the incoming traffic very fast - usually within 1 - 2 seconds anywhere on the globe.

The net result is that your site will be faster and more secure!

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What is Cloudflare?  A visual explanation:

Cloudflare is NOT a hosting provider - it is a service to assist you with speed and security (along with other possible features).

What is Cloudflare

 

If we have contacted you regarding a Cloudflare move or migration - or if you are interested in moving to a Cloudflare solution - here's some information you may wish to know.

How do I move to Cloudflare or what will be happening?
DNS records will be migrated to a better, faster and more secure platform.

Why is this necessary?
It is an optional but highly recommend method to provide additional speed and security to your website. DNS is typically published locally via the domain registrar or local network partners. While this is generally reliable, an improved level of service is achievable particularly around DNS security and speed. The change is also necessary to help maintain a robust and highly secure network.

What are the benefits?
Moving DNS records to Cloudflare - a CDN with enormous reach across the global internet - means that your website will load faster, be more secure and benefit from additional features designed to ensure reliability and provide increased performance.

What are the risks?
Cloudflare is a third party service provider and is therefore to a large extent, out of our / your control.  You can utilise their services on the understanding that if they experience any kind of problem or issue with their platform - you could be affected.  Thankfully, Cloudflare outages are fairly rare - but they do happen and as with any service provider, there is always an element of risk.  If we or you yourself set up Cloudflare for your domain, you will be agreeing to their terms of service (check these here).  You can also check their status online here.

What DNS records will be involved?
Cloudflare primarily affects A records (website domain IP addresses), however, we can manage all of your DNS records at Cloudflare, including the mail (MX) records, CNAME records and TXT files (e.g. SPF / DKIM etc).  As a result, it is necessary to import and manage all of your domain DNS records into Cloudflare.  However, if you have multiple domain names, you are not obligated to import all of them in Cloudflare (though it's recommended so that you can take full advantage of the benefits!)

Do I need to be concerned?
Not overly. While any change to DNS / nameservers carries some risk, negative affects are rare to any services during a changeover.  That's because the DNS is not really 'changing' - it's already published - we are simply migrating the record(s) to a more robust platform.

What do I need to do?
If you wish, we can handle all of your Cloudflare requirements, or you may be able to manage it yourself.  If we are managing this for you, you don't need to do anything, the change will take place automatically.

Is there any cost for this?
At the present time, we do not charge for the basic level of Cloudflare service.  If you are a Club Purple Maintenance and Web Hosting member because those fees that you've already paid will usually cover it. If you are not our customer but would like us to manage your Cloudflare account for you, we do offer this service - please get in touch to find out more.  Furthermore, for all customers, there are Premium level offerings available and those will be charged at prevailing rates (we do not add any surcharge).  Please enquire if you would like to know more or if you have any additional questions.

 

 

 

  • cloudflare, cdn, security, dns, speed, propagation time
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