What is cloudflare, how it works and why a fall or block makes half the Internet fail

Let’s explain What is cloudflare and how it works This shield and accelerator for web pages. It is one of those almost essential services for the correct functioning of the Internet, but that we are not aware until it fails or blocks and you can enter hundreds of websites.

We will begin this article explaining in a simple way what is cloudflare, summarizing the operation of the Internet and the role that CDNs have like this service in it. Then, we will tell you why a fall or lock of the service makes half the Internet seem to fall.

What is cloudflare and how it works

Cloudflare is a CDN, a Content Delivery Network either Content distribution networkthat in Spanish is Content distribution network. It’s about a network of servers distributed throughout the world destined to help better distribute Internet content and make you can quickly and safely access the content of a website.

To understand its operation you must first understand how the Internet works. A web page is housed on a server, and simplifying it a lot, when you enter it you connect your computer to that server, to access the contents of a website. The same happens when you want to enter any online service or web application, you have to connect to your server.

The problem is that perhaps the server of my application is in a country far from the computer from which someone wants to connect. So, that distance makes the connection speed very slow, or that even from some countries cannot be entered.

The same happens if the web or the service you are going to access had a single server. Then, having thousands of users entering that single server would make everything slower because I would have to work more and for more people.

It is here where the CDNs and their networks of servers come into play. When a website, an online service or application resorts to them, is as if they had copies of the content and cache distributed all over the world to be able to connect in a faster and more efficient way. There will always be a server close to you, and traffic can be distributed by the hundreds of servers.

Thus, if I connect from Spain to an American service, I will not join a giant user queue wanting to enter a single server that is also far away, something that would make the connection slow. Simply, I will connect to the nearest server of the CDN network that is using that service. Everything will go faster, and the traffic that accesses the service will be more distributed.

Cloudflare is one of the most used CDNs of the world. There are many web pages that resort to this company, because in addition to a very wide network of servers, it also offers protection against various types of online attacks that could collapse access to the contents.

This way, Cloudflare is an intermediary between a customer or user and the content of the website or the online service they want to access. It is a network that houses copies of a service so that you always have geographically close, technologically safe access, and less traffic collapsed.

Why if Cloudflare Failure Middle Internet does it

When you stop accessing this network of servers, you can access its content. This means that if your Internet operator blocks you access to Cloudflare or if this service has a failure, stop being able to enter most web pages. There will be no network that distributes traffic and access to these websites, and simply connect to one would be too slow or you would be too far.

For practical purposes and simplifying it a lot, Not being able to access Cloudflare means not being able to access many servicesand that those who use it and are not fallen simply go extremely slow.

This is so for The dependence of Cloudflare. Being one of the most popular CDNs in the world, many important and top -level services access it. And these services that use it, depend on their servers network to work properly.

In this PDF You can see the services and websites used Cloudflare, such as X, Bluesky, Microsoft, Mozilla, Snapchat, Temu, Efe, Github, Wikimedia, Facua, CaixaBank and many more. All these services will stop working or work extremely slow if the Cloudflare network stops working.

When a website or online service fails, it is sure that there is a problem with the infrastructure of the server network that provides you with access to it. So Errors like the 502 Bad Gateway indicating this problem. If the one who cannot access a website, app or service is due to this, all you can do is cloudflare or the CDN to use the error.

When an operator blocks access to cloudflare Or some other concrete CDN, the problem is that your IP cannot access this network of servers, although it works correctly. In these cases solving it is easyand you just have to use one VPN to access from a different IP that does not have access.

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