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Cloudflare
Cloudflare is far more than just a content delivery network (CDN). It acts as a protection and acceleration layer (edge) in front of the actual server infrastructure.
Core Concept
The intelligent edge: requests are processed at the data centre closest to the user. This enables massive protection against attacks (WAF, DDoS) and extremely fast load times through caching and global optimisation.
Assessment
- Use case: Protecting business-critical websites, accelerating global APIs, and executing code directly at the edge (Cloudflare Workers).
- Advantage: Market-leading DDoS protection, very easy to configure, and an excellent free base offering.
- Limitation: Acts as a man-in-the-middle, which requires full trust in the provider; complex configurations can lead to hard-to-trace errors.