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Cloudflare took down our website

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Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#221

Post by nbk_2000 »

endisneigh wrote: post #103
jrochkind1 wrote: post #77

I have been hearing stories from developers/entrepeneurs about Cloudflare being very weird to deal with: "We'd like to talk to you about an enterprise plan." "No thanks, I'm fine with the free plan." "Based on your traffic, we'd like to talk to you about an enteprrise plan." "Is there a traffic limit on the free plan?" "No, there is no limit. But based on your traffic, we require you to get an enteprirse plan." [Give…

I wonder why they don’t just have clear limits - seems like it would make it easier to grok.

That's not how the "free until it's not" pricing model works :P

IMHO it's just the price finding model that CF has adopted, I expect in the future they'll release limit numbers... unless they decide not releasing numbers is more profitable (i.e. the used car sales pricing model)

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#222

Post by silverquiet »

jsheard wrote: post #149
endisneigh wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why they don’t just have clear limits - seems like it would make it easier to grok.

I think it being difficult to grok is the point, if they laid down exactly how much they want you to pay for bandwidth then it would be easy to go price shopping between them and the competition. But when it's "free" bandwidth, with a fuzzy line where it stops being free, and ambiguous pricing when it does, they can hook people in with a great deal and try to shake them down later. I still encounter people who refuse…

Free hits obscuring ruinous costs is a time honored strategy of drug dealers and all kinds of shady businesses.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#223

Post by CuriousCosmic »

rvnx wrote: post #46
candiddevmike wrote: post #5

Sounds like OP is a casino and plays domain games to avoid regulatory interest. Recommend reading article carefully before reacting to the headline. Hopefully Cloudflare provides a perspective.

Taking a step back, why would they even care if their platform is supposedly neutral and not responsible for the content ? If they can indeed stop providing services to a casino, why cannot they shutdown a website spreading pro-war propaganda, or a website selling illegal services ? It means they are making editorial choices, instead of just being the technological provider and being a neutral "internet pipe". Not su…

> Taking a step back, why would they even care if their platform is supposedly neutral and not responsible for the content ?

Because their main network all uses one big IP address pool and the blocks by various regions/countries against their site were probably not just DNS blocks but also IP address blocks.

So they now have an account whose activity is getting their IPs banned in countries where they operate.

So they told the account owners they needed to pay for an enterprise account and a dedicated IP address pool maintained by cloudflare. That's why CF kept talking about BYOIP in the emails.

i.e. "Pay for us to build you a quarantine with your own IP pool or leave ASAP"

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#224

Post by brigadier132 »

Xeamek wrote: post #189

Can any1 explain how HN algo works that this post, which at time of writing has 355p, 180comments while being posted 1 hour ago, isn't even on first page (ranked 31)???

My guess for why this would be flagged: its a gambling website so people are unsympathetic. Definitely an abuse of the flagging system.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#225

Post by CuriousCosmic »

Hikikomori wrote: post #16
candiddevmike wrote: post #5

Sounds like OP is a casino and plays domain games to avoid regulatory interest. Recommend reading article carefully before reacting to the headline. Hopefully Cloudflare provides a perspective.

How does paying $10k a month solve that?

It's 10k a month for them to set up a dedicated IP address pool so that they could BYOIP and buy their own IP addresses instead of getting the IP addresses in cloudflare's main IP address pool repeatedly banned or reputation harmed.

i.e. it's a $10k fee for maintaining the infrastructure for a quarantine around their services

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#226

Post by zb3 »

zamadatix wrote: post #106
dailykoder wrote: post #90

>I'm a SysOps engineer at a fairly large online casino. So they did a good thing taking it down, no?? Addiction as a businessmodel is not that cool

Sidestepping the whole ethical conversation and just taking it as a good action for the hosting provider to do it still fails the sniff test as Cloudflare (according to this story at least) didn't seek to take it down rather sought to make more off of it.

Sure, but if two bad entities fight I don't care about any of them, let them fight to death.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#227

Post by shkkmo »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #206
jmvoodoo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But for $10k a month cloudflare is ok with that? Either it's acceptable or it's not, there is no way that this looks good for cloudflare either way.

It's not just 10k a month. it's 10k a month for the plan that allows you to BYOIP (Bring your own IP addresses). That was cloudflare's issue. Their business was causing IP reputation damage and all plans but the enterprise BYOIP plans share the same IP pool. Essentially it was "use your own IP pool and pay us for the cost of maintaining that pool for you or GTFO". This wasn't just a normal sales rep hitting them up.…

> So this really should be seen as an act of goodwill rather than malice.

It's called "extortion"

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#228

Post by zb3 »

xiwenc wrote: post #161
_cenw wrote: post #76

Notable, their Enterprise plan quote included BYOIP. I think that's the kicker. Cloudflare likely got a few of their anycast load balancing IPs blocked in one country, causing a huge disruption, because this customer that makes them no money wasn't in full compliance with local laws.

If that is the “key” they should be transparent and explicit about it. Now it seems CF is a Mafia that realizes one of their extorted business should be squeezed to death for more cash.

Casinos should indeed be squeezed to death, and the money should go back to their victims

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#229

Post by CtrlAltDelete51 »

While the author could improve the narrative in his article, the historical issues with Cloudflare combined with, yet another one, paint a stark picture.

Combine it with the stories I hear about Sales, the numerous other PR fumbles already mentioned in this thread, and the months I’ve personally waited (while on a paid plan!) for ticket responses only to get cookie cutter responses is, quite frankly, embarrassing.

CloudFlare puts in a good front, and their products seem decent, but they really have questionable business practices that should make anyone think twice before using them.

Re: Cloudflare took down our website

#230

Post by safety1st »

nocfforever wrote: post #126
jrochkind1 wrote: post #77

I have been hearing stories from developers/entrepeneurs about Cloudflare being very weird to deal with: "We'd like to talk to you about an enterprise plan." "No thanks, I'm fine with the free plan." "Based on your traffic, we'd like to talk to you about an enteprrise plan." "Is there a traffic limit on the free plan?" "No, there is no limit. But based on your traffic, we require you to get an enteprirse plan." [Give…

I thought about using CF in some of my deployments. After hearing about these sorts of "discussions" from other colleagues, I certainly talked about using their services. And then I realized that I had to hand them over my DNS? Uhh, no. It could have been "set nameserver to ours in your DNS console". And also there was the recent SSL spoofing they're doing even with DNS with no hosted websites. And they charge money…

In fairness regarding this particular post, the author admits they were probably violating Cloudflare's ToS, and they knew it.

The folks at CF could have been less obtuse in handling the matter. But at the end of the day this is an online casino breaking ToS and they got spanked.

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