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Cloudflare Calls

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Cloudflare Calls

#21

Post by yamtaddle »

seeekr wrote: post #9
rixthefox wrote: post #7

They really do want to be the center of everything it seems. I wish they would stop trying to be the Cisco of Networking in the sense of trying to convince a lot of people to let them handle critical network functions for a ton of networks. All it will take is one major outage for everyone to see this is a bad idea. Why trust a cloud provider who could go down and take half the Internet with it? Why centralize it tha…

They just keep building on top of the things they've already built that are working really well, expanding into related services. Doesn't seem that different from what AWS is doing, just with a different focus and in a different place in everyone's (or the Internet's) stack.

The focus on a different place in the stack is really, really key, though. It's what's letting them make the kind of "the whole Internet's middle-man" play that they are.

Re: Cloudflare Calls

#22

Post by gizmo »

This basically turns phone/video chat into a feature. If this actually works with 10.000 people in a room as advertised Zoom is in a lot of trouble.

Re: Cloudflare Calls

#23

Post by corytheboyd »

jgrahamc wrote: post #4
corytheboyd wrote: post #3

This sounds badass to be honest. Having written some WebRTC browser applications from scratch, that architecture turns into a complicated mess real fast, I can only imagine the nightmare that becomes at less than well equipped tech startups. This sounds like the right way to actually solve the problem.

Dammit. We should have made the internal code name for this BADA55.

Haha you can keep that one in your back pocket :)

Re: Cloudflare Calls

#24

Post by onion2k »

teddyh wrote: post #12
dewey wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really getting tired of this kind of take. You never really see that if AWS adds a product, or GCP adds a product or any other products from bigger CDNs. What do you suggest? Cloudflare should stop releasing products? Regulation that you are only allowed to handle x% of the total internet traffic?

> You never really see that if AWS adds a product, or GCP adds a product or any other products from bigger CDNs. Accusations of hypocrisy is not an argument. Instead of accusing me (and all other detractors) of not criticizing others enough, please elaborate why this isn’t what I described. Cloudflare (and others) keep releasing products which makes their central role more central and less vulnerable to competition.…

please elaborate why this isn’t what I described

Approximately 1/3 of the most popular websites use Cloudflare[1]. That's not really an argument against the fact that Cloudflare might want to be 'the central server of the internet', but it's a suggestion that they have some way to go yet. I'd bet that Google Tag Manager and some AWS services are integrated into more than 1/3.

[1] From https://backlinko.com/cloudflare-users

Re: Cloudflare Calls

#25

Post by corytheboyd »

endisneigh wrote: post #19
corytheboyd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, this rhetoric is getting old. So we're supposed to go use one of thousands of other tiny cloud platform providers? Okay let's entertain that idea. The first bare minimum items on your vendor approval checklist are things like "can I trust this business to exist in 10 years" , "do they have enough resources to support me when shit hits the fan", and "are they mature enough to deliver on the shiny bullet point…

> Isn't this process going to naturally select a small handful of providers? What am I missing here? No. It's possible to not do a lot and still last a very long time. Consider zippers, YKK has existed for almost a century and they only manufacture zippers.

I know you know this but there is quite the difference between a multi-faceted cloud compute offering and the thing that holds my hoodie together.

Re: Cloudflare Calls

#26

Post by endisneigh »

corytheboyd wrote: post #25
endisneigh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't this process going to naturally select a small handful of providers? What am I missing here? No. It's possible to not do a lot and still last a very long time. Consider zippers, YKK has existed for almost a century and they only manufacture zippers.

I know you know this but there is quite the difference between a multi-faceted cloud compute offering and the thing that holds my hoodie together.

The point is that it's possible for a company to focus on one thing for a long time. Do you dispute this?

Re: Cloudflare Calls

#27

Post by gautamdivgi »

teddyh wrote: post #12
dewey wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really getting tired of this kind of take. You never really see that if AWS adds a product, or GCP adds a product or any other products from bigger CDNs. What do you suggest? Cloudflare should stop releasing products? Regulation that you are only allowed to handle x% of the total internet traffic?

> You never really see that if AWS adds a product, or GCP adds a product or any other products from bigger CDNs. Accusations of hypocrisy is not an argument. Instead of accusing me (and all other detractors) of not criticizing others enough, please elaborate why this isn’t what I described. Cloudflare (and others) keep releasing products which makes their central role more central and less vulnerable to competition.…

That’s too much government control for my liking. Just being honest. Laws that prevent free enterprise never end well. There should be laws that prevent companies from selling a product at a “loss” to gain market share. But to prevent companies from releasing products is completely different level of control which is undesirable.

Re: Cloudflare Calls

#28

Post by peterhadlaw »

nine_k wrote: post #15
rixthefox wrote: post #7

They really do want to be the center of everything it seems. I wish they would stop trying to be the Cisco of Networking in the sense of trying to convince a lot of people to let them handle critical network functions for a ton of networks. All it will take is one major outage for everyone to see this is a bad idea. Why trust a cloud provider who could go down and take half the Internet with it? Why centralize it tha…

It reminds me the days of Google flourishing in early 2000s: they added more and more wonderful stuff (such as mail, or maps) while improving their flagship offering, search, more and more. A lot of people were their sincere fans.

But then what happened....

Re: Cloudflare Calls

#29

Post by nine_k »

Xeoncross wrote: post #13

> "With a traditional WebRTC implementation, both the patient and therapist’s devices would talk directly with each other, leading to exposure of potentially sensitive data such as the IP address... When using Calls, you are still using WebRTC, but the individual participants are connecting to the Cloudflare network. If four people are on a video call powered by Cloudflare Calls, each of the four participants' device…

"If you don't trust each other, trust us": a very understandable value proposition. Also very understandable trade-offs.

Re: Cloudflare Calls

#30

Post by hn_go_brrrrr »

yamtaddle wrote: post #21
seeekr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just keep building on top of the things they've already built that are working really well, expanding into related services. Doesn't seem that different from what AWS is doing, just with a different focus and in a different place in everyone's (or the Internet's) stack.

The focus on a different place in the stack is really, really key, though. It's what's letting them make the kind of "the whole Internet's middle-man" play that they are.

AWS is going for "the internet's backend". I don't see how that's any different. A SPOF is still a problem, no matter where in your stack it lives.
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