NGINX? You want to self-host DDOS protection?
Ask HN: What's a good open-source alternative to Cloudflare?
11–20 of 69 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's a good open-source alternative to Cloudflare?
#12Couldn't agree more. I've been loving cloudflare since the very, very, beginning, but a few little red flags the past couple years have me wanting to find an alternative as well. Thank you for asking this.
Hate to ask if this is obvious, but what are said red flags from the past couple years IYO?
Re: Ask HN: What's a good open-source alternative to Cloudflare?
#13What would it even mean to be an open source Cloudflare? The entire point of Cloudflare is that they run the tricky stuff for you. As another user said here, you can use nginx and lots of other OSS to achieve the same end goals. You will work much harder for it though.
I guess I'm just wondering how I could piecemeal it together without using cloudflare. A friend had suggested checking out bunny DNS and that got me going down the rabbit hole.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good open-source alternative to Cloudflare?
#14you need a lot of tools to replace cloudflare, there is authelia, bind, ngix, traefik. I dont think you can have any sort of DoS protection if your ISP cuts off your internet if you're beign attacked...
To be fair many cloud providers offer some kind of DDoS protection to their customers.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good open-source alternative to Cloudflare?
#15What would it even mean to be an open source Cloudflare? The entire point of Cloudflare is that they run the tricky stuff for you. As another user said here, you can use nginx and lots of other OSS to achieve the same end goals. You will work much harder for it though.
I guess I'm just wondering how I could piecemeal it together without using cloudflare. A friend had suggested checking out bunny DNS and that got me going down the rabbit hole.
That’s not really what a CDN is/does…
The value proposition of a CDN is being physically closer to customers around the world, which means renting space in (often) expensive carrier hotels.
Yes yes all the major CDNs have loads of developer and infrastructure wizbangs to keep you on their platform but that’s not the fundamental value.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good open-source alternative to Cloudflare?
#16there are a million of cdn providers(bunny and beluga are among the cheapest). that is not an issue. even though it's not going to be free, at least you will no longer be the product. they are not reverse proxies like CF but changing links on your web is not that complicated.
and every data center has a hardware ddos protection, you don't need a service for that if you use good web or server hosting provider.
cloudflare is not really that special. the reason normal people even know the name CF is because it was free. not because of what it provided.
and after they started censoring, there is no reason to keep using their services. they screwed themselves over by doing that. sooner or later they will stop being normies favourite and become purely corporate service.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good open-source alternative to Cloudflare?
#17Couldn't agree more. I've been loving cloudflare since the very, very, beginning, but a few little red flags the past couple years have me wanting to find an alternative as well. Thank you for asking this.
Hate to ask if this is obvious, but what are said red flags from the past couple years IYO?
They essentially have MITM capabilities over a significant portion of the web, undermining TLS security. They have a tendency to deny access to normal users using privacy-friendly setups (Tor, without Javascript, etc), and them operating in net loss (implying that the shareholders value growth, i.e. gobbling up even more of the internet infrastructure). Some people are also concerned about their emerging ability as a powerful force for censorship and surveillance, but they seem to have maintained a good stance on free speech so far (not sure about surveillance). Cloudflare threatens the nature of the web as a somewhat decentralized system, although it is not the only one doing that.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good open-source alternative to Cloudflare?
#18You can block and throttle my country with any ol' server like CloudFlare. The tricky part is making sure folks using privacy-oriented setups get dozens of hCAPTCHAs. /s
Re: Ask HN: What's a good open-source alternative to Cloudflare?
#19Couldn't agree more. I've been loving cloudflare since the very, very, beginning, but a few little red flags the past couple years have me wanting to find an alternative as well. Thank you for asking this.
Hate to ask if this is obvious, but what are said red flags from the past couple years IYO?
They’re a backdoor access point for the US government.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good open-source alternative to Cloudflare?
#20What would it even mean to be an open source Cloudflare? The entire point of Cloudflare is that they run the tricky stuff for you. As another user said here, you can use nginx and lots of other OSS to achieve the same end goals. You will work much harder for it though.
# rant
I thought about this for a solid 15 minutes. What really is an open source of version of Cloudflare? That leads into the question of what is really Cloudflare.
An enterprise that has built something so huge that the idea it represents can not be separated from the service (as a whole) they provide. That is like saying what is the open source alternative to I don't know....Intel or Oracle. It not only covers a suite of offering that is impossible to replicate, but rather the complexity of each component of their entire service suite.
How the heck are you supposed to do open source CDN?
Then you take a step back and the question again, which still doesn't make any sense. "Open source alternative to Cloudflare". The question is supposed to be "What represents the open source alternative to what Cloudflare's XYZ does".
CDN, a network that is designed to deliver content... and needs to be open source. P2P systems? Torrenting? Some weird blockchain stuff? Are they CDN? I have no clue. You end up compromising in the definition of the service Cloudflare provides to pick something because it is supposed to be Open Source. You go down the list of each service Cloudflare with your own Open Source twist and you end up with a web service that more and more represents the Web 1.0 and arguably not reliable. What are you compromising at that point? Open source becomes an agenda rather than a solution.
Cloudflare isn't a software company, you are essentially paying them for the hardware they are carrying in their network/portfolio. They are not Open Source-able.