Improving Cloudflare’s products and services, one feature request at a time
I started at Cloudflare in April 2018. I was excited to join an innovative company that operates with integrity and takes customer needs into account when planning product roadmaps. After 2.5 years at Cloudflare, this excitement has only grown, as it has become even clearer that our customers’ feedback is essential to our business. At an all-hands meeting this November, Michelle Zatlyn, our co-founder and COO, said that “every time we see things and approach problems from the lens of a customer, we make better decisions.” One of the ways we make these decisions is through Customer Success Managers funneling our customers’ feedback to our product and engineering teams.
As a Strategic Customer Success Manager, I meet regularly with my customers to better understand their experience with Cloudflare and work cross-functionally with our internal teams to continually improve it. One thing my customers often mention to me, regardless of industry or size, is their appreciation that their feedback is not only heard but understood and actioned. We are an engineering-driven company that remains agile enough to Continue reading
Business without labour, Automation without workers
First posted in Human Infrastructure Magazine in March 2020 Its fashionable in Enterprise IT is to reduce headcount. This reflects a wider business fashion of ‘business without labour’ that chases the dream of ‘profits without cost’. You see, investors watch ‘revenue per employee’ or ‘profit per employee’ and IT managers feel pressure to ditch people […]
Partnering with Global Cyber Alliance on Open Standards, Routing Security, and More
Our work is strengthened, and our impact magnified, when we collaborate with partners to build a secure and trustworthy Internet for all. That’s why we’re proud to announce we’ve entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Global Cyber Alliance (GCA) to work together on routing security, open Internet standards, and other areas of joint interest. The Global Cyber Alliance is an international, cross-sector effort dedicated to reducing cyber risk and improving our connected world.
This relationship is not new. The Internet Society and GCA have a long history of working together, from promoting email and Internet of Things (IoT) security to improving routing security, increasing deployment of open standards, and helping stakeholders participate meaningfully in the multistakeholder management of core Internet resources.
Both organizations have emphasized the importance of research, capacity building, and advocacy to develop key technologies and policies. This work helps promote the Internet, its resources, the need for vigilant user-enabled security, and the need for the Internet to remain open, inclusive, and an enabler of opportunities.
“We’re proud to extend and formalize our long-standing relationship with GCA to create real change for network operators and Internet users around the globe. By joining forces, we can promote enhanced Continue reading
Repost: Drawbacks and Pitfalls of Cut-Through Switching
Minh Ha left a great comment describing additional pitfalls of cut-through switching on my Chasing CRC Errors blog post. Here it is (lightly edited).
Ivan, I don’t know about you, but I think cut-through and deep buffer are nothing but scams, and it’s subtle problems like this [fabric-wide crc errors] that open one’s eyes to the difference between reality and academy. Cut-through switching might improve nominal device latency a little bit compared to store-and-forward (SAF), but when one puts it into the bigger end-to-end context, it’s mostly useless.
Repost: Drawbacks and Pitfalls of Cut-Through Switching
Minh Ha left a great comment describing additional pitfalls of cut-through switching on my Chasing CRC Errors blog post. Here it is (lightly edited).
Ivan, I don’t know about you, but I think cut-through and deep buffer are nothing but scams, and it’s subtle problems like this [fabric-wide crc errors] that open one’s eyes to the difference between reality and academy. Cut-through switching might improve nominal device latency a little bit compared to store-and-forward (SAF), but when one puts it into the bigger end-to-end context, it’s mostly useless.
Remote Working Drives New Growth for 5G and Edge Computing
As data center technology is being designed for 5G and the edge, there is a need for increased performance, open-source software, and new data standards.Privacy and Compliance Reading List
Privacy matters. Privacy and Compliance are at the heart of Cloudflare's products and solutions. We are committed to providing built-in data protection and privacy throughout our global network and for every product in our portfolio. This is why we have dedicated a whole week to highlight important aspects of how we are working to make sure privacy will stay at the core of all we do as a business.
In case you missed any of the blog posts this week addressing the topics of Privacy and Compliance, you’ll find a summary below.
Welcome to Privacy & Compliance Week: Reflecting Values at Cloudflare’s Core
We started the week with this introduction by Matthew Prince. The blog post summarizes the early decisions that the founding team made to make sure customer data is kept private, that we do not sell or rent this data to third parties, and why trust is the foundation of our business. > Read the full blog post.
Introducing the Cloudflare Data Localization Suite
Cloudflare’s network is private and compliant by design. Preserving end-user privacy is core to our mission of helping to build a better Internet; we’ve never sold personal data about customers or end-users of our Continue reading
Docker Engine and Compose Install Debian 10
How to install Docker engine and compose on Debian 10.Supporting Jurisdictional Restrictions for Durable Objects
Over the past week, you’ve heard how Cloudflare is making it easy for our customers to control where their data is stored and protected.
We’re not the only ones building these data controls. Around the world, companies are working to figure out where and how to store customer data in a way that is compliant with data localization obligations. For developers, this means new deployment models and new headaches — wrangling infrastructure in multiple regions, partitioning user data based on location, and staying on top of the latest rules from regulators.
Durable Objects, currently in limited beta, already make it easy for customers to manage state on Cloudflare Workers without worrying about provisioning infrastructure. Today, we’re announcing Jurisdictional Restrictions for Durable Objects, which ensure that a Durable Object only stores and processes data in a given geographical region. Jurisdictional Restrictions make it easy for developers to build serverless, stateful applications that not only comply with today’s regulations, but can handle new and updated policies as new regulations are added.
How Jurisdictional Restrictions Work
When creating a Durable Object, developers generate a unique ID that lets a Cloudflare Worker communicate with the Object.
Let’s say I want to create a Durable Continue reading
Docker Engine and Compose Install Debian 10
Docker and docker-compose are a very common tools for developing and deploying applications. In this post I will cover the process of installing Docker engine and Docker compose on Debian 10 minimal. Software Versions Used In This Post Debian Minimal - 10.7 Buster Docker Engine CE -...Networking and Infrastructure News Roundup: December 11 Edition
IEEE to explore Ethernet rates above the current 400 Gb/s max, Cato Networks automates provisioning and more via a new API to its SASE platform, and more.Quotes To Remember
Great quotes that I would like to remeber.DNS Flag Day 2020
One of the outcomes of the 'stacked' architecture of network protocol design is that upper level protocols should not try to do the job of the lower layers. Packet adaptation through fragmentation is a IP layer 'problem' and applications do not have to concern themselves with this. We've come some distance from this position and these days many applications need to be highly aware of transport layer and IP layer properties, and the DNS is no exception. There have been some recent steps in the DNS with the DNS Flag Day 2020 to try and tune the DNS to avoid packet fragmentation. How bad is the problem with packet fragmentation and do the DNS Flag Day measures address the issue?How Long Should You Practice
A reporter once asked boxing legend Muhammad Ali how many sit-ups he did each day. I’m sure the reporter wasn’t expecting Ali’s answer. Ali replied with:
I don’t know. I don’t start counting them until it hurts. Those are the only ones that count. That’s what makes you a champion.”
Ali knew that counting things is just a numbers game. Five hundred poor sit-ups don’t count as much a fifty done the right way. With any practice that you do the only things that count are the things that teach your something or that push you to be better.
Don’t Practice Until It’s Right
People used to ask me how long I would spend at night studying for the CCIE lab. I told them I usually spent between five and seven hours depending on what I was studying. Sometimes those people would say things like “I’m not talking about setup time. I’m talking about actual lab work.” I always countered by making them explain why the setup isn’t part of the “real” work. That’s usually when they went quiet.
It’s far too easy to fall into the trap of overlooking things that you think are unimportant. A task Continue reading