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Helping build a green Internet

When we started Cloudflare, we weren't thinking about minimizing the environmental impact of the Internet. Frankly, I didn't really think of the Internet as having much of an environmental impact. It was just this magical resource that gave access to information and services from anywhere.

But that was before I started racking servers in hyper-cooled data centers. Before Cloudflare started paying the bills to keep those servers powered up and cooled down. Before we became obsessed with maximizing the number of requests we could process per watt of power. And long before we started buying directly from renewable power suppliers to drive down the cost of electricity across our network.

Today, I have a very good understanding of how much power it takes to run the Internet. It therefore wasn't surprising to read the Boston Consulting Group study which found that 2% of all carbon output, about 1 billion metric tons per year, is attributable to the Internet. That’s the equivalent of the entire aviation industry.

Cloudflare: Accidentally Environmentally Friendly By Design

While we didn't set out to reduce the environmental impact of the Internet, Cloudflare has always had efficiency at its core. It comes from our ongoing fight with Continue reading

Announcing Green Compute on Cloudflare Workers

All too often we are confronted with the choice to move quickly or act responsibly. Whether the topic is safety, security, or in this case sustainability, we’re asked to make the trade off of halting innovation to protect ourselves, our users, or the planet. But what if that didn’t always need to be the case? At Cloudflare, our goal is to bring sustainable computing to you without the need for any additional time, work, or complexity.

Enter Green Compute on Cloudflare Workers.

Green Compute can be enabled for any Cron triggered Workers. The concept is simple: when turned on, we’ll take your compute workload and run it exclusively on parts of our edge network located in facilities powered by renewable energy. Even though all of Cloudflare’s edge network is powered by renewable energy already, some of our data centers are located in third-party facilities that are not 100% powered by renewable energy. Green Compute takes our commitment to sustainability one step further by ensuring that not only our network equipment but also the building facility as a whole are powered by renewable energy. There are absolutely no code changes needed. Now, whether you need to update a leaderboard every five Continue reading

Designing Edge Servers with Arm CPUs to Deliver 57% More Performance Per Watt

Cloudflare has millions of free customers. Not only is it something we’re incredibly proud of in the context of helping to build a better Internet — but it’s something that has made the Cloudflare service measurably better. One of the ways we’ve benefited is that it’s created a very strong imperative for Cloudflare to maintain a network that is as efficient as possible. There’s simply no other way to serve so many free customers.

In the spirit of this, we are very excited about the latest step in our energy-efficiency journey: turning to Arm for our server CPUs. It has been a long journey getting here — we started testing our first Arm CPUs all the way back in November 2017. It’s only recently, however, that the quantum of energy efficiency improvement from Arm has become clear. Our first Arm CPU was deployed in production earlier this month — July 2021.

Our most recently deployed generation of edge servers, Gen X, used AMD Rome CPUs. Compared with that, the newest Arm based CPUs process an incredible 57% more Internet requests per watt. While AMD has a sequel, Milan (and which Cloudflare will also be deploying), it doesn’t achieve the same Continue reading

Cloudflare: 100% Renewable & Zeroing Out Emissions Back to Day 1

As we announced this week, Cloudflare is helping to create a clean slate for the Internet. Our goal is simple: help build a better, greener Internet with no carbon emissions that is powered by renewable energy.

To help us get there, Cloudflare is making two announcements. The first is that we're committed to powering our network with 100% renewable energy. This builds on work we started back in 2018, and we think is clearly the right thing to do. We also believe it will ultimately lead to more efficient, more sustainable, and potentially cheaper products for our customers.

The second is that by 2025 Cloudflare aims to remove all greenhouse gases emitted as the result of powering our network since our launch in 2010. As we continue to improve the way we track and mitigate our carbon footprint, we want to help the Internet begin with a fresh start.

Finally, as part of our effort to track and mitigate our emissions, we're also releasing our first annual carbon emissions inventory report. The report will provide detail on exactly how we calculate our carbon emissions as well as our renewable energy purchases. Transparency is one of Cloudflare's core values. It's how Continue reading

Green Hosting with Cloudflare Pages

At Cloudflare, we are continuing to expand our sustainability initiatives to build a greener Internet in more than one way. We are seeing a shift in attitudes towards eco-consciousness and have noticed that with all things considered equal, if an option to reduce environmental impact is available, that’s the one widely preferred by our customers. With Pages now Generally Available, we believe we have the power to help our customers reach their sustainability goals. That is why we are excited to partner with the Green Web Foundation as we commit to making sure our Pages infrastructure is powered by 100% renewable energy.

The Green Web Foundation

As part of Cloudflare’s Impact Week, Cloudflare is proud to announce its collaboration with the Green Web Foundation (GWF), a not-for-profit organization with the mission of creating an Internet that one day will run on entirely renewable energy. GWF maintains an extensive and globally categorized Green Hosting Directory with over 320 certified hosts in 26 countries! In addition to this directory, the GWF also develops free online tools, APIs and open datasets readily available for companies looking to contribute to its mission.

What does it mean to be a Green Web Foundation partner?

Understand and reduce your carbon impact with Cloudflare

Today, as part of Cloudflare’s Impact Week, we’re excited to announce a new tool to help you understand the environmental impact of operating your websites, applications, and networks. Your Carbon Impact Report, available today for all Cloudflare accounts, will outline the carbon savings of operating your Internet properties on Cloudflare’s network.

Everyone has a role to play in reducing carbon impact and reversing climate change. We shared today how we’re approaching this, by committing to power our network with 100% renewable energy. But we’ve also heard from customers that want more visibility into the impact of the tools they use (also referred to as “Scope 3” emissions) — and we want to help!

The impact of running an Internet property

We’ve previously blogged about how Internet infrastructure affects the environment. At a high level, powering hardware (like servers) uses energy. Depending on its source, producing this energy may involve emitting carbon into the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change.

When you use Cloudflare, we use energy to power hardware to deliver content for you. But how does that energy we use compare to the energy it would take to deliver content without Cloudflare? As of today, you can go Continue reading

Oversubscription in Networking

The post Oversubscription in Networking appeared first on Noction.

Of course you can’t trust scientists on politics

Many people make the same claim as this tweet. It's obviously wrong. Yes,, the right-wing has a problem with science, but this isn't it.

If you think you don't trust scientists, you're mistaken. You trust scientists in a million different ways every time you step on a plane, or for that matter turn on your tap or open a can of beans. The fact that you're unaware of this doesn't mean it's not so.
— Paul Graham (@paulg) July 26, 2021

First of all, people trust airplanes because of their long track record of safety, not because of any claims made by scientists. Secondly, people distrust "scientists" when politics is involved because of course scientists are human and can get corrupted by their political (or religious) beliefs.

And thirdly, the concept of "trusting scientific authority" is wrong, since the bedrock principle of science is distrusting authority. What defines sciences is how often prevailing scientific beliefs are challenged.

Carl Sagan has many quotes along these lines that eloquently expresses this:

A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, Continue reading

Virtual Tunnel Interface (VTI) VPN

Over the years I have built numerous IPsec VPNs on ASAs using crypto maps and an ACL for the interesting traffic. For a simple solution to join small sites with no need for routing these work great and keep the complexity down to a minimum. For more complex environments or cloud connectivity you are probably going to need to use VTIs, this post goes through the process of building VTI VPNs between an ASR and ASA.

Install Crystal Ubuntu 2004

Crystal is an exciting sounding language which is: "As slick as Ruby and as fast as C." In this post I will show you how install the Crystal programming language on Ubuntu 2004. Code versions used in this post Ubuntu - 2004 Crystal - 1.1.0 Crystal Repository First, add the Crystal...continue reading

Intel Sees Path Back To Chip Process Performance Leadership

For decades, Intel leaned heavily on its manufacturing prowess as a key advantage over its various competitors like AMD, which had its own chip foundry that it spun off in 2009 and which became Globalfoundries. …

Intel Sees Path Back To Chip Process Performance Leadership was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

HPE servers will ship in liquid-cooled chassis

Iceotope Technologies will offer HPE ProLiant servers in Iceotope’s self-contained liquid cooled chassis, which can run in enterprise data centers and is ruggedized to operate in extreme edge scenarios as well.The Ku:l chassis combines Iceotope's immersion liquid-cooling technology in Avnet racks and EcoStruxure management technology from Schneider Electric. It supports standard server boards in a 1U immersion cooling tray from Iceotope.Chip shortage will hit hardware buyers for months to years In an enterprise data center, the Ku:l chassis can add function without without adding load to the existing cooling systems since it is entirely self-contained. At the same time it is rugged enough for extreme edge environments that might damage standard IT equipment. The chassis provides zero-touch operation with advanced out-of-band management for complete remote control of the entire system.To read this article in full, please click here

HPE servers will ship in liquid-cooled chassis

HPE servers will ship in liquid-cooled chassis and Iceotope partner for liquid cooled edge servers

Tech Bytes: Protecting Public Schools With Fortinet’s Security Fabric (Sponsored)

In this Tech Bytes podcast we talk with Bill Pulte, CIO of the Educational Services Unit (ESU), which provides education services to public schools in Nebraska. Pulte uses multiple Fortinet products, including Fortinet's firewalls and Security Fabric, to help protect school districts across the state. Fortinet is our episode sponsor.

Tech Bytes: Protecting Public Schools With Fortinet’s Security Fabric (Sponsored)

The post Tech Bytes: Protecting Public Schools With Fortinet’s Security Fabric (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Passing the Torch to the next Internet Society Board Chair

In the 2016 Internet Society AGM (Annual General Meeting), I was elected Chair of the Board by the trustees of the Internet Society. I have had the honor and the privilege to serve in that capacity during the last five years. In the upcoming 2021 Internet Society AGM I will reach my term limit as […]

The post Passing the Torch to the next Internet Society Board Chair appeared first on Internet Society.

Leveraging Similarities

We tend to think every technology and every product is roughly unique—so we tend to stay up late at night looking at packet captures and learning how to configure each product individually, and chasing new ones as if they are the brightest new idea (or, in marketing terms, the best thing since sliced bread). Reality check: they aren’t. This applies across life, of course, but especially to technology. From a recent article—

Whenever I start learning a new programming language, I focus on defining variables, writing a statement, and evaluating expressions. Once I have a general understanding of those concepts, I can usually figure out the rest on my own. Most programming languages have some similarities, so once you know one programming language, learning the next one is a matter of figuring out the unique details and recognizing the differences.

RFC1925 rule 11 states—

Every old idea will be proposed again with a different name and a different presentation, regardless of whether it works.

Rule 11 isn’t just a funny saying—rule 11 is your friend. If want to learn new things quickly, learn rule 11 first. A basic understanding of the theory of networking will carry across all products, all Continue reading

The Week in Internet News: Spyware Targets Human Rights Activists, Journalists

Spyware on the loose: Military-grade spyware from Israeli company NSO Group has been used to spy on journalists, human rights activists, and business leaders, according to an investigation from the Washington Post and media partners. Among the people being spied on were several Arab royal family members, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights […]

The post The Week in Internet News: Spyware Targets Human Rights Activists, Journalists appeared first on Internet Society.

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