11/20/2025
What is Cloudflare and why is it important to me?
Cloudflare is a global internet infrastructure and security company that acts as a middleman for millions of websites, providing services like cybersecurity, content delivery network (CDN), and Domain Name Service (DNS) to improve speed, security, and reliability. It works by routing a website's traffic through its own servers, which can be physically closer to the end-user, speeding up load times and protecting the site from attacks.
How it works
• Acts as a reverse proxy: When you try to access a website, your request goes to the nearest Cloudflare server instead of the website's original server.
• Improves speed: Cloudflare's network stores (or "caches") copies of a website's content in its data centers around the world. This allows for faster delivery of content, as the information doesn't have to travel as far.
• Increases security: Cloudflare filters traffic, blocking malicious requests and protecting sites from attacks like Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS).
• Manages DNS: Cloudflare provides Domain Name Service, translating human-readable website names into the numerical IP addresses that computers use.
Why it's important
• Cloudflare's services are essential for a vast number of websites and online applications, making it a critical part of the internet's infrastructure.
• Because it handles traffic for so many sites, an outage on Cloudflare's network can cause widespread internet disruptions, affecting popular services like those used for online browsing, social media, and shopping.
