Show HN: I made a down detector for down detector • Hacker News Board

I feel like the classic East Dakota reply would be that cloud flare CDN does not host your data and merely proxies it (bonus points if he uses the words "mere conduit" in his reply and therefore cloud flare can't be held responsible yada yada).

Jokes aside, as far as I can tell, https://downdetectorsdowndetector.com/ is NOT using Cloudflare CDN/Proxy

https://downdetectorsdowndetector.com/ is NOT using Cloudflare SSL

However, selesti reports it uses cloudflare DNS?

https://checkforcloudflare.selesti.com/?q=https://downdetect...

https://downdetectorsdowndetector.com/ is using Cloudflare DNS!

Checked 8 global locations, found DNS entries for Cloudflare in 3

Found in: England, Russia, USA

Not found in: China, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Netherlands

Re: Show HN: I made a down detector for down detector

#26

Post by moooo99 » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 9:09 AM UTC

buildfocus wrote: post #20

spyridonas wrote: post #13

As a European solo developer, I’ve switched entirely to European alternatives for all my infrastructure since the beginning of the year. Cloudflare > Bunny.net AWS > Hetzner Business email > Infomaniak Not a single client site has experienced downtime, and it feels great to finally decouple from U.S. services.

I've done something similar, it's worth noting Scaleway in the same space, for people looking for an AWS replacement more like managed services (equivalents to fargate/lambda/sqs/s3/etc) instead of just bare instance hosting.

+1 for Scaleway. I also use Hetzner for most of my compute. But some stuff just really profits from using managed services. I‘ve used Scaleway‘s Serverless compute offers and managed DBs an been quite happy with them.

Re: Show HN: I made a down detector for down detector

#27

Post by ZeroConcerns » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 9:12 AM UTC

carstenhag wrote: post #12

ZeroConcerns wrote: post #7

Thank you for your service! Now, for an even bigger challenge: since it seems the increased demand for the Cloudflare status page brought down Amazon CloudFront for a bit as well, build a new CDN capable of handling that load as well...

Do you need a CDN for a static html, no images? I would guess no, even if you.are being bombarded with requests

I would guess yes, unless you have a server with unlimited file descriptors and flawless connectivity to every other AS...

Re: Show HN: I made a down detector for down detector

#28

Post by p_v_doom » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 9:13 AM UTC

quid custodiet ipso custodes, amirite?

Re: Show HN: I made a down detector for down detector

#29

Post by wltr » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 9:20 AM UTC

thinkingemote wrote: post #17

4ndrewl wrote: post #9

But we need another one to detect whether yours is still up. It's downdetectorsdown all the way down.

https://downdetectorsdowndetectorsdowndetector.com/

It was worth the laugh, thanks!

Re: Show HN: I made a down detector for down detector

#30

Post by graemep » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 9:24 AM UTC

spyridonas wrote: post #13

As a European solo developer, I’ve switched entirely to European alternatives for all my infrastructure since the beginning of the year. Cloudflare > Bunny.net AWS > Hetzner Business email > Infomaniak Not a single client site has experienced downtime, and it feels great to finally decouple from U.S. services.

Those are all much smaller. Smaller providers have a much stronger incentive to be reliable, as they will lose customers if they are not. In a corporate settings management will say "this would not have happened if you had gone with AWS". its the current version of "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" (we had MS and others in between).

Hetzner provides a much simpler set of services than AWS. Less complexity to go wrong.

A lot of people want the brand recognition too. Its also become the standard way of doing things and is part of the business culture. I have sometimes been told its unprofessional or looks bad to run things yourself instead of using a managed service.