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Category Archives for "Networking"

Git: Set Up a Local Repository Accessible by LAN

A Git repository simplifies the sharing of code to a team. Many teams opt to go the GitHub route but there might be an occasion when you need to spin up a quick repository that is only available to those team members working on your LAN. When you need to deploy a Git repository on your LAN and you need to give other team members access to it, the goal is to do it quickly and securely. Thanks to git and Secure Shell (SSH), this isn’t nearly as challenging as you might think. And although this setup might not be an option for team members who work outside of your LAN, it’s great for a temporary repository offered to those within your company network. How does it work? Let me show you. What You’ll Need To make this work, you’ll need the following: A Linux machine with Git installed. An SSH key pair. A user with sudo privileges (if the minimum requirements aren’t installed). That’s it. Let’s make some Git magic. Installing Git On the off-chance Git isn’t installed, here’s how you can take care of that: Ubuntu-based distributions – sudo apt-get install git -y Fedora-based distributions – sudo dnf Continue reading

Weekend Reads 092824


Instead, Broadcom is now experimenting with co-packaging the optics directly into the GPUs themselves.


With K-12 schools back in session across the nation, millions of students are adjusting to a new learning environment — a cellphone-free classroom or, in some cases, a phone-free school day.


Being at the core of the Internet places the DNS under a lot of pressure. New forms of DNS abuse emerge each year, disputes over domain names persist, and all the while, the Internet just keeps getting bigger.


The censorship war has hit a flashpoint. Late last month, Brazil banned Elon Musk’s social media site, X, after Musk refused a government order to suppress seven dissident accounts.


This raises a question. If someone is situated in South America and wants to access youtu.be, is their performance going to be impacted (assuming he has to do the entire recursive lookup with no cache)?


ODA focuses on identifying macroscopic Internet outages, such as outages that affect a significant portion of the population within either a geographic region or an Autonomous System (AS).


For practitioners, this study provides a rich set of criteria that can be used for evaluating their projects, as well as strong evidence of Continue reading

Palo Alto App-ID – How Does It Work?

Palo Alto App-ID - How Does It Work?

If you've ever worked with traditional Layer 4 firewalls, you might be familiar with configuring security policies based on TCP or UDP port numbers. For instance, to allow DNS, you'd create a policy for UDP/53, or for LDAP, a policy for TCP/389.

This approach is normal with firewalls like Cisco ASA. But it's 2024, and Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) have become the standard, offering a more sophisticated way to manage security. Instead of relying solely on port numbers, NGFWs like those from Palo Alto Networks encourage defining security policies based on the actual applications termed 'App-ID'. For example, instead of specifying port numbers, a policy could simply be defined to allow 'DNS' and 'LDAP', focusing on the applications themselves.

Palo Alto App-ID Introduction

Okay, that sounds simple, so why continue reading you may ask? Well, while Palo Alto’s App-ID does work well most of the time, there are nuances that you need to understand. For applications like DNS, NTP, and LDAP, App-ID works very well. However, the most common applications involve SSL or web browsing, typically associated with ports 80 and 443.

Palo Alto provides App-IDs for both SSL and Web-Browsing (called ssl and web-browsing Continue reading

HN751: Top Tips for Building A CCIE-EI Lab

The Packet Pushers and guest Mason Reimert discuss strategies he’s using to prepare for the Cisco CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure lab exam. Mason shares practical tips for hands-on labbing for both established and emerging technologies like SD-WAN and SD-Access, resource management, virtualization tools, and automation. He also highlights the importance of understanding APIs, data formats, and... Read more »

AI Everywhere with the WAF Rule Builder Assistant, Cloudflare Radar AI Insights, and updated AI bot protection

The continued growth of AI has fundamentally changed the Internet over the past 24 months. AI is increasingly ubiquitous, and Cloudflare is leaning into the new opportunities and challenges it presents in a big way. This year for Cloudflare’s birthday, we’ve extended our AI Assistant capabilities to help you build new WAF rules, added AI bot traffic insights on Cloudflare Radar, and given customers new AI bot blocking capabilities.  

AI Assistant for WAF Rule Builder

At Cloudflare, we’re always listening to your feedback and striving to make our products as user-friendly and powerful as possible. One area where we've heard your feedback loud and clear is in the complexity of creating custom and rate-limiting rules for our Web Application Firewall (WAF). With this in mind, we’re excited to introduce a new feature that will make rule creation easier and more intuitive: the AI Assistant for WAF Rule Builder. 

By simply entering a natural language prompt, you can generate a custom or rate-limiting rule tailored to your needs. For example, instead of manually configuring a complex rule matching criteria, you can now type something like, "Match requests with low bot score," and the assistant will generate the rule for Continue reading

Our container platform is in production. It has GPUs. Here’s an early look

We’ve been working on something new — a platform for running containers across Cloudflare’s network. We already use it in production for Workers AI, Workers Builds, Remote Browsing Isolation, and the Browser Rendering API. Today, we want to share an early look at how it’s built, why we built it, and how we use it ourselves.

In 2024, Cloudflare Workers celebrates its 7th birthday. When we first announced Workers, it was a completely new model for running compute in a multi-tenant way — on isolates, as opposed to containers. While, at the time, Workers was a pretty bare-bones functions-as-a-service product, we took a big bet that this was going to become the way software was going to be written going forward. Since introducing Workers, in addition to expanding our developer products in general to include storage and AI, we have been steadily adding more compute capabilities to Workers:

2020

Cron Triggers

2021

Durable Objects

Write Workers in Rust

Service Bindings

2022

Queues

Email Workers

Durable Objects Alarms

2023

Workers TCP Socket API 

Hyperdrive

Smart Placement

Workers AI

2024

Python Workers

JavaScript-native RPC

Node.js compatibility

SQLite in Durable Objects

With each of these, we’ve faced a question — can Continue reading

Reaffirming our commitment to free

Cloudflare launched our free tier at the same time our company launched — fourteen years ago, on September 27, 2010. Of course, a bit has changed since then — there are now millions of Internet properties behind Cloudflare. As we’ve grown in size and amassed millions of free customers, one of the questions we often get asked is: how can Cloudflare afford to do this at such scale?

Cloudflare always has, and always will, offer a generous free version for public-facing applications (Application Services), internal private networks and people (Cloudflare One), and developer tools (Developer Platform). Counterintuitively: our free service actually helps us keep our costs lower. Not only is it mission-aligned, our free tier is business-aligned. We want to make abundantly clear: our free plan is here to stay, and we reaffirmed that commitment this week with 15 releases across our product portfolio that make the Free plan even better.

Understanding our Cost of Goods Sold

To understand the economics of Free, you need to understand our Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). Cloudflare hasn’t outsourced its network — we built it ourselves, and it spans more than 330 cities. We design and ship Continue reading

Network trends and natural language: Cloudflare Radar’s new Data Explorer & AI Assistant

Cloudflare Radar showcases global Internet traffic patterns, attack activity, and technology trends and insights. It is powered by data from Cloudflare's global network, as well as aggregated and anonymized data from Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 public DNS Resolver, and is built on top of a rich, publicly accessible API. This API allows users to explore Radar data beyond the default set of visualizations, for example filtering by protocol, comparing metrics across multiple locations or autonomous systems, or examining trends over two different periods of time. However, not every user has the technical know-how to make a raw API query or process the JSON-formatted response.

Today, we are launching the Cloudflare Radar Data Explorer, which provides a simple Web-based interface to enable users to easily build more complex API queries, including comparisons and filters, and visualize the results. And as a complement to the Data Explorer, we are also launching an AI Assistant, which uses Cloudflare Workers AI to translate a user’s natural language statements or questions into the appropriate Radar API calls, the results of which are visualized in the Data Explorer. Below, we introduce the AI Assistant and Data Explorer, and also dig into how we Continue reading

Empowering builders: introducing the Dev Alliance and Workers Launchpad Cohort #4

Today we’re announcing the Dev Starter Pack, an alliance of innovative tools for developers to get started with discounts and free services. We’re also excited to share an update on our Workers Launchpad Program.

Creating from the ground up often means spending countless hours piecing together the right development stack, navigating different pricing models, and managing growing costs — all of which can take your focus away from what truly matters: building your product and growing your business.

Introducing Dev Starter Pack: the tools you need to start building your startup

Hey! Dani Grant here, one of the first PMs at Cloudflare and co-founder of Jam.dev. Ten years ago (during 2014’s Birthday Week), Cloudflare launched Universal SSL, making SSL free on the Internet for the first time, and in one night doubling the size of the encrypted web.

I was a college student back then, and I immediately became enraptured by Cloudflare’s mission: helping build a better Internet. As part of this mission, Cloudflare has developed powerful tools typically accessible only to Internet giants, oftentimes offering them for free to developers and individuals alike. Heck yeah! I joined Cloudflare in January 2015, and 5 years after that, co-founded Continue reading

Advancing cybersecurity: Cloudflare implements a new bug bounty VIP program as part of CISA Pledge commitment

As our digital world becomes increasingly more complex, the importance of cybersecurity grows ever more critical. As a result, Cloudflare is proud to promote our commitment to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) ‘Secure by Design’ pledge. The commitment is built around seven security goals, aimed at enhancing the safety of our products and delivering the most secure solutions to our customers.

Cloudflare’s commitment to the CISA pledge reflects our dedication to transparency and accountability to our customers, and to cybersecurity best practices. Furthermore, Cloudflare is committed to being a trusted partner by sharing our strategies to ensure the highest priority is placed on safeguarding our customers’ security. 

Bug bounty VIP program

Cloudflare has successfully managed a public Vulnerability Disclosure Program (VDP) for years; our belief is that collaboration is the cornerstone of effective cybersecurity. We are excited to announce a major milestone in our journey to meet Goal #5 of the pledge: our program will now include a bug bounty VIP program in conjunction with our bug bounty public program.

Continuous investment in maturing our bug bounty program is a vital tool for the success of any security organization. By encouraging broader participation in vulnerability testing, Continue reading

Expanding Cloudflare’s support for open source projects with Project Alexandria

At Cloudflare, we believe in the power of open source. It’s more than just code, it’s the spirit of collaboration, innovation, and shared knowledge that drives the Internet forward. Open source is the foundation upon which the Internet thrives, allowing developers and creators from around the world to contribute to a greater whole.

But oftentimes, open source maintainers struggle with the costs associated with running their projects and providing access to users all over the world. We’ve had the privilege of supporting incredible open source projects such as Git and the Linux Foundation through our open source program and learned first-hand about the places where Cloudflare can help the most.

Today, we're introducing a streamlined and expanded open source program: Project Alexandria. The ancient city of Alexandria is known for hosting a prolific library and a lighthouse that was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Lighthouse of Alexandria served as a beacon of culture and community, welcoming people from afar into the city. We think Alexandria is a great metaphor for the role open source projects play as a beacon for developers around the world and a source of knowledge that is core to making a Continue reading

Running a Simple HTTP Server with Python

Running a Simple HTTP Server with Python

I think this is going to be the shortest blog post of all time because running a Python HTTP server is incredibly straightforward. Python's HTTP server module lets you create a basic web server using just a single command. This server can serve files from a directory over the network, making it an excellent tool for quick testing and file sharing without the complexity of setting up a full-fledged web server.

You can start the Python HTTP server with the command python -m http.server 8000, which serves files from the current directory on port 8000. You can choose any port number by replacing 8000 with your preferred port. However, if you select a lower port number, such as 80, you might need administrator privileges to run the server.

💡
You don't even need to have a Python file or any code to run this, just this single command does the trick.

In this example, I have two files in a directory - one is a text file with a list of domains and the second is a simple YAML file.

Running a Simple HTTP Server with Python

If I run the command python -m http.server 8000, it starts a web server and I Continue reading

Builder Day 2024: 18 big updates to the Workers platform

To celebrate Builder Day 2024, we’re shipping 18 updates inspired by direct feedback from developers building on Cloudflare. Choosing a platform isn't just about current technologies and services — it's about betting on a partner that will evolve with your needs as your project grows and the tech landscape shifts. We’re in it for the long haul with you.

Starting today, you can:

We’ve brought key features from Pages to Workers, allowing you to: 

Four things are going GA and are officially production-ready:

We made Workers KV up to 3x faster — here’s the data

Speed is a critical factor that dictates Internet behavior. Every additional millisecond a user spends waiting for your web page to load results in them abandoning your website. The old adage remains as true as ever: faster websites result in higher conversion rates. And with such outcomes tied to Internet speed, we believe a faster Internet is a better Internet.

Customers often use Workers KV to provide Workers with key-value data for configuration, routing, personalization, experimentation, or serving assets. Many of Cloudflare’s own products rely on KV for just this purpose: Pages stores static assets, Access stores authentication credentials, AI Gateway stores routing configuration, and Images stores configuration and assets, among others. So KV’s speed affects the latency of every request to an application, throughout the entire lifecycle of a user session. 

Today, we’re announcing up to 3x faster KV hot reads, with all KV operations faster by up to 20ms. And we want to pull back the curtain and show you how we did it. 

Workers KV read latency (ms) by percentile measured from Pages

Optimizing Workers KV’s architecture to minimize latency

At a high level, Workers KV is itself a Worker that makes requests to central Continue reading

Zero-latency SQLite storage in every Durable Object

Traditional cloud storage is inherently slow, because it is normally accessed over a network and must carefully synchronize across many clients that could be accessing the same data. But what if we could instead put your application code deep into the storage layer, such that your code runs directly on the machine where the data is stored, and the database itself executes as a local library embedded inside your application?

Durable Objects (DO) are a novel approach to cloud computing which accomplishes just that: Your application code runs exactly where the data is stored. Not just on the same machine: your storage lives in the same thread as the application, requiring not even a context switch to access. With proper use of caching, storage latency is essentially zero, while nevertheless being durable and consistent.

Until today, DOs only offered key/value oriented storage. But now, they support a full SQL query interface with tables and indexes, through the power of SQLite.

SQLite is the most-used SQL database implementation in the world, with billions of installations. It’s on practically every phone and desktop computer, and many embedded devices use it as well. It's known to be blazingly fast and rock solid. But Continue reading

Making Workers AI faster and more efficient: Performance optimization with KV cache compression and speculative decoding

During Birthday Week 2023, we launched Workers AI. Since then, we have been listening to your feedback, and one thing we’ve heard consistently is that our customers want Workers AI to be faster. In particular, we hear that large language model (LLM) generation needs to be faster. Users want their interactive chat and agents to go faster, developers want faster help, and users do not want to wait for applications and generated website content to load. Today, we’re announcing three upgrades we’ve made to Workers AI to bring faster and more efficient inference to our customers: upgraded hardware, KV cache compression, and speculative decoding.

Thanks to Cloudflare’s 12th generation compute servers, our network now supports a newer generation of GPUs capable of supporting larger models and faster inference. Customers can now use Meta Llama 3.2 11B, Meta’s newly released multi-modal model with vision support, as well as Meta Llama 3.1 70B on Workers AI. Depending on load and time of day, customers can expect to see two to three times the throughput for Llama 3.1 and 3.2 compared to our previous generation Workers AI hardware. More performance information for these models can be found Continue reading

Cloudflare’s bigger, better, faster AI platform

Birthday Week 2024 marks our first anniversary of Cloudflare’s AI developer products — Workers AI, AI Gateway, and Vectorize. For our first birthday this year, we’re excited to announce powerful new features to elevate the way you build with AI on Cloudflare.

Workers AI is getting a big upgrade, with more powerful GPUs that enable faster inference and bigger models. We’re also expanding our model catalog to be able to dynamically support models that you want to run on us. Finally, we’re saying goodbye to neurons and revamping our pricing model to be simpler and cheaper. On AI Gateway, we’re moving forward on our vision of becoming an ML Ops platform by introducing more powerful logs and human evaluations. Lastly, Vectorize is going GA, with expanded index sizes and faster queries.

Whether you want the fastest inference at the edge, optimized AI workflows, or vector database-powered RAG, we’re excited to help you harness the full potential of AI and get started on building with Cloudflare.

The fast, global AI platform

The first thing that you notice about an application is how fast, or in many cases, how slow it is. This is especially true of AI applications, Continue reading

Startup Program revamped: build and grow on Cloudflare with up to $250,000 in credits

Today, we’re pleased to offer startups up to $250,000 in credits to use on Cloudflare’s Developer Platform. This new credits system will allow you to clearly see usage and associated fees to plan for a predictable future after the $250,000 in credits have been used up or after one year, whichever happens first.

You can see eligibility criteria and apply to the start-up program here. 

What can you use the credits for?

Credits can be applied to all Developer Platform products, as well as Argo and Cache Reserve. Moreover, we provide participants with up to three Enterprise-level domains, which includes CDN, DDoS, DNS, WAF, Zero Trust, and other security and performance products that a participant can enable for their website.

Developer tools and building on Cloudflare

You can use credits for Cloudflare Developer Platform products, including those listed in the table below.

Note: credits for the Cloudflare Startup Program apply to Cloudflare products only, this table is illustrative of similar products in the market.

Speed and performance with Cloudflare

We know that founders need all the help they can get when starting their businesses. Beyond the Developer Platform, you can also use the Startup Program for our speed Continue reading

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