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Category Archives for "Networking"

SVG support in Cloudflare Images

SVG support in Cloudflare Images
SVG support in Cloudflare Images

Cloudflare Images was announced one year ago on this very blog to help you solve the problem of delivering images in the right size, right quality and fast. Very fast.

It doesn’t really matter if you only run a personal blog, or a portal with thousands of vendors and millions of end-users. Doesn’t matter if you need one hundred images to be served one thousand times each at most, or if you deal with tens of millions of new, unoptimized, images that you deliver billions of times per month.

We want to remove the complexity of dealing with the need to store, to process, resize, re-encode and serve the images using multiple platforms and vendors.

At the time we wrote:

Images is a single product that stores, resizes, optimizes and serves images. We built Cloudflare Images, so customers of all sizes can build a scalable and affordable image pipeline in minutes.

We supported the most common formats, such as JPG, WebP, PNG and GIF.

We did not feel the need to support SVG files. SVG files are inherently scalable, so there is nothing to resize on the server side before serving them to your audience. One can even argue that Continue reading

Going originless with Cloudflare Workers – Building a Todo app – Part 1: The API

Going originless with Cloudflare Workers – Building a Todo app – Part 1: The API
Going originless with Cloudflare Workers – Building a Todo app – Part 1: The API

A few months ago we launched Custom Domains into an open beta. Custom Domains allow you to hook up your Workers to the Internet, without having to deal with DNS records or certificates – just enter a valid hostname and Cloudflare will do the rest! The beta’s over, and Custom Domains are now GA.

Custom Domains aren’t just about a seamless developer experience; they also allow you to build a globally distributed instantly scalable application on Cloudflare’s Developer Platform. That’s because Workers leveraging Custom Domains have no concept of an ‘Origin Server’. There’s no ‘home’ to phone to - and that also means your application can use the power of Cloudflare’s global network to run your application, well, everywhere. It’s truly serverless.

Let’s build “Todo”, but without the servers

Today we’ll start a series of posts outlining a simple todo list application. We’ll start with an API and hook it up to the Internet using Custom Domains.

With Custom Domains, you’re treating the whole network as the application server. Any time a request comes into a Cloudflare data center, Workers are triggered in that data center and connect to resources across the network as needed. Our developers don’t need to Continue reading

The easiest way to build a modern SaaS application

The easiest way to build a modern SaaS application
The easiest way to build a modern SaaS application

The Software as a Service (SaaS) model has changed the way we work – 80% of businesses use at least one SaaS application. Instead of investing in building proprietary software or installing and maintaining on-prem licensed software, SaaS vendors provide businesses with out-of-the-box solutions.

SaaS has many benefits over the traditional software model: cost savings, continuous updates and scalability, to name a few. However, any managed solution comes with trade-offs. As a business, one of the biggest challenges in adopting SaaS tooling is loss of customization. Not every business uses software in the same way and as you grow as a SaaS company it’s not long until you get customers saying “if only I could do X”.

Enter Workers for Platforms – Cloudflare's serverless functions offering for SaaS businesses. With Workers for Platforms, your customers can build custom logic to meet their requirements right into your application.

We’re excited to announce that Workers for Platforms is now in GA for all Enterprise customers! If you’re an existing customer, reach out to your Customer Success Manager (CSM) to get access. For new customers, fill out our contact form to get started.

The conundrum of customization

As a SaaS business invested in Continue reading

Stream Live is now Generally Available

Stream Live is now Generally Available
Stream Live is now Generally Available

Today, we’re excited to announce that Stream Live is out of beta, available to everyone, and ready for production traffic at scale. Stream Live is a feature of Cloudflare Stream that allows developers to build live video features in websites and native apps.

Since its beta launch, developers have used Stream to broadcast live concerts from some of the world’s most popular artists directly to fans, build brand-new video creator platforms, operate a global 24/7 live OTT service, and more. While in beta, Stream has ingested millions of minutes of live video and delivered to viewers all over the world.

Bring your big live events, ambitious new video subscription service, or the next mobile video app with millions of users — we’re ready for it.

Streaming live video at scale is hard

Live video uses a massive amount of bandwidth. For example, a one-hour live stream at 1080p at 8Mbps is 3.6GB. At typical cloud provider egress prices, even a little egress can break the bank.

Live video must be encoded on-the-fly, in real-time. People expect to be able to watch live video on their phone, while connected to mobile networks with less bandwidth, higher latency and Continue reading

R2 is now Generally Available

R2 is now Generally Available

This post is also available in Français and Español.

R2 is now Generally Available

R2 gives developers object storage, without the egress fees. Before R2, cloud providers taught us to expect a data transfer tax every time we actually used the data we stored with them. Who stores data with the goal of never reading it? No one. Yet, every time you read data, the egress tax is applied. R2 gives developers the ability to access data freely, breaking the ecosystem lock-in that has long tied the hands of application builders.

In May 2022, we launched R2 into open beta. In just four short months we’ve been overwhelmed with over 12k developers (and rapidly growing) getting started with R2. Those developers came to us with a wide range of use cases from podcast applications to video platforms to ecommerce websites, and users like Vecteezy who was spending six figures in egress fees. We’ve learned quickly, gotten great feedback, and today we’re excited to announce R2 is now generally available.

We wouldn’t ask you to bet on tech we weren’t willing to bet on ourselves. While in open beta, we spent time moving our own products to R2. One such example, Cloudflare Images, proudly serving thousands Continue reading

Full Stack Journey 070: A Network Automation Career Journey With Eric Chou

On today's Full Stack Journey podcast we welcome guest Eric Chou, an author, educator, and network engineer. From traditional network engineering to the birth of "cloud" at Amazon and now working to share his knowledge via blog posts, videos, books, and classes, Eric shares lessons learned on his career journey.

The post Full Stack Journey 070: A Network Automation Career Journey With Eric Chou appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Nvidia GTC: Hopper processor in full production

Nvidia kicked off its second GTC conference of the year with news that its H100 “Hopper” generation of GPUs is in full production, with global partners planning to roll out products and services in October and wide availability in the first quarter of 2023.Hopper features a number of innovations over Ampere, its predecessor architecture introduced in 2020. Most significant is the new Transformer engine. Transformers are widely-used deep learning models and the standard model of choice for natural language processing. Nvidia claims the H100 Transformer Engine can speed up neural networks by as much as six-fold over Ampere without losing accuracy.To read this article in full, please click here

Nvidia GTC: Hopper processor in full production

Nvidia kicked off its second GTC conference of the year with news that its H100 “Hopper” generation of GPUs is in full production, with global partners planning to roll out products and services in October and wide availability in the first quarter of 2023.Hopper features a number of innovations over Ampere, its predecessor architecture introduced in 2020. Most significant is the new Transformer engine. Transformers are widely-used deep learning models and the standard model of choice for natural language processing. Nvidia claims the H100 Transformer Engine can speed up neural networks by as much as six-fold over Ampere without losing accuracy.To read this article in full, please click here

Survey: Outages, staffing challenge data centers

Data-centers are working to improve the resiliency of their physical infrastructure, avoid increasingly expensive outages, and recruit skilled staff in a competitive labor market. Meanwhile, many aren’t tracking critical environmental metrics, even as they face looming sustainability requirements.These are some of the highlights of Uptime’s Institute's 12th annual Global Data Center Survey, which tracks trends in capacity, tech adoption, and staffing.To read this article in full, please click here

Survey: Outages, staffing challenge data centers

Data-centers are working to improve the resiliency of their physical infrastructure, avoid increasingly expensive outages, and recruit skilled staff in a competitive labor market. Meanwhile, many aren’t tracking critical environmental metrics, even as they face looming sustainability requirements.These are some of the highlights of Uptime’s Institute's 12th annual Global Data Center Survey, which tracks trends in capacity, tech adoption, and staffing.To read this article in full, please click here

Kyndryl service integrates, automates infrastructure resources

Kyndryl has launched an infrastructure-management service that promises to help connect and integrate enterprise resources.Kyndryl Bridge integrates existing tools, partnerships, intellectual property, and processes the company has amassed through years of delivering infrastructure services and uses it to provide as-a-service capabilities and applications that help control and manage enterprise infrastructure.Enterprises have invested in heterogeneous tools and management platforms that don’t integrate the data they gather, and Kyndryl Bridge connects, aggregates, and centralizes that siloed performance data, said Antoine Shagoury, Kyndryl’s chief technology officer. "Then, we use our engineering expertise and AI to analyze the results in real time to provide operations personnel the intelligence they need to keep systems running at peak performance," he said.To read this article in full, please click here

Kyndryl service integrates, automates infrastructure resources

Kyndryl has launched an infrastructure-management service that promises to help connect and integrate enterprise resources.Kyndryl Bridge integrates existing tools, partnerships, intellectual property, and processes the company has amassed through years of delivering infrastructure services and uses it to provide as-a-service capabilities and applications that help control and manage enterprise infrastructure.Enterprises have invested in heterogeneous tools and management platforms that don’t integrate the data they gather, and Kyndryl Bridge connects, aggregates, and centralizes that siloed performance data, said Antoine Shagoury, Kyndryl’s chief technology officer. "Then, we use our engineering expertise and AI to analyze the results in real time to provide operations personnel the intelligence they need to keep systems running at peak performance," he said.To read this article in full, please click here

Vulnerability management: 3 best practices and tips for image building and scanning

As enterprises adopt containers, microservices, and Kubernetes for cloud-native applications, vulnerability management is crucial to improve the security posture of containerized workloads throughout build, deploy, and runtime. Securing your build artifacts and deployment pipeline, especially when it comes to images, is extremely important. By following best practices for image building and scanning throughout the application development and deployment process, you can help ensure the security of the containers and workloads in your environment.

Let’s look at some of the nuances of choosing a base image, hardening your container image, and container image scanning, including tips on choosing an appropriate scanning solution and tackling privacy concerns.

Choose an appropriate base image

It’s important to choose a base image that reduces the attack surface of your container. I recommend using a distroless or scratch image because they contain only the application and its runtime dependencies. Both types of images improve your security posture by reducing the attack surface and exposure to vulnerabilities.

If for some reason you can’t use a distroless or scratch image, choose a minimal distro. Modern immutable Linux distributions, such as Bottlerocket and Flatcar Container Linux, can be used as base images for containers, as can minimal versions Continue reading

Does My Business Need an AI-powered Writing Tool?

When it comes to writing, there are many challenges that can make the process difficult or time-consuming. For example, drafting and proofreading long pieces of content can take hours or even days, and if you’re working on a tight deadline, this can put a strain on your productivity. Additionally, things like grammar mistakes or awkward sentence structure can make your writing hard to understand, lowering the quality of your work and making it less effective.

Reasons Why You Should Consider Using an AI-powered Writing Tool

AI-powered writing tools offer a great solution to these challenges. The following are reasons why you should use AI to make your writing easier and more efficient:

Automated proofreading

AI-powered writing tools use sophisticated algorithms to scan your content for errors, helping you catch mistakes before they go out to your readers. This not only saves you time, but also ensures that your writing is error-free and professional.

Increased productivity

Because AI-powered writing tools are able to quickly analyze and identify patterns in your writing, they can help you draft and edit content much more efficiently. This gives you more time to focus on the aspects of content creation that require your expertise, like researching Continue reading

Cloudflare Area 1 – how the best email security keeps getting better

Cloudflare Area 1 - how the best email security keeps getting better
Cloudflare Area 1 - how the best email security keeps getting better

On February 23, 2022, after being a customer for two years and seeing phishing attacks virtually disappear from our employee’s mailboxes, Cloudflare announced the acquisition of Area 1 Security.

Thanks to its unique technology (more on that below) Cloudflare Area 1 can proactively identify and protect against phishing campaigns before they happen, and potentially prevent the 90%+ of all cyberattacks that Deloitte research identified as starting with an email. All with little to no impact on employee productivity.

But preventing 90% of the attacks is not enough, and that’s why Cloudflare Area 1 email security is part of our Zero Trust platform. Here’s what’s new.

Email Security on your Cloudflare Dashboard

Starting today you will find a dedicated Email Security section on your Cloudflare dashboard. That’s the easiest way for any Cloudflare customer to get familiar with and start using Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security.

From there you can easily request a trial, which gives you access to the full product for 30 days.

Our team will guide you through the setup, which will take just a few minutes. That’s the beauty of not having to install and tune a Secure Email Gateway (SEG). You can simply configure Area Continue reading