Cloudflare is bad. Youre right. - eviltoast

Centralization is bad for everyone everywhere.

That bring said… I just moved my homeserver to another city… and I plugged in the power, then I plugged in the ethernet, and that was the whole shebang.

Tunnels made it very easy. No port forwarding no dns configuration no firewall fiddling no nothing.

Why do they have to make it so so easy…

  • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 months ago

    The trouble with cloudflare is that there is just one. It’s one of the best registrars out there, the only free/cheap and usable DNS host (have you seen what route53 charges per zone??). That without getting into the whole tunnels and DDoS mitigation end of things, which is nearly unique at any price point.

    The problem with cloudflare is that we’re missing three other cloudflares to move to if they decide to pull evil shit.

    • ramble81@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      The bigger trouble is creating a CDN has a stupidly high barrier to entry. You literally need your own data centers across the world, your own server infrastructure, the man power to manage it, etc.

      You could try to host it on a cloud provider but you’d go bankrupt even quicker. Unless someone were to try to build a co-op run CDN, it’s just not gonna happen without a profit motive and a large amount of capital.

      • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 months ago

        That’s true. The bizarre paradox of the centralization of edge infrastructure is real.

        That said, the other edge-lords (haha) could offer similar functionality, but they chose not to.

      • yannic@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        I once realized so many of my favourite businesses were cooperatives. I started thinking of what other co-ops I could start and grow. The excitement faded once I realized it would have to not be about the money.

        • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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          5 months ago

          Coops are still about the money. They’re about saving money by sharing resources with fellow workers/consumers, and maintaining democratic control over the company. You’re not going to get rich from a coop (without embezzlement), but you and your coowners will be cutting out the middle man. Obviously, it only makes sense for industries that you’re heavily invested in.

      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I feel like something like https://www.storj.io/ is on the path to what we would want/need?

        There might be some additional requirements for a true CDN to ensure data is closer to where it’s needed and in as many regions as needed though with the right amount of bandwidth. The data gets stored all over the place, but that doesn’t mean its optimal. But they do seem to claim it’s faster on their website…

        Edit: For those not wanting to click, TLDR is they use excess storage around the world and make it accessible anywhere, and safe from failures. People with excess storage can join the network if they have enough storage/bandwidth and pass some tests. Their API is S3 compatible.

      • I mean the optimal cdn is maximally distributed to reduce load and latency right. Unfortunatly the web was not built in a manner that supports this.

        Eg if we could have a single url for the same object that could be served by any server that is part of the fediverse then the fediverse itself would be an optimal cdn.

        Perhaps we should take some notes from peertube. Plus more legitimate bit torrent content on the internet as a whole is hardly a bad thing make the isp’s jobs harder for places without net neutrality.

          • I consulted with professor gpt and it seams that it’s basicly just giving the same ip address to multiple servers meaning that any of said servers can serve as that ip.

            Also it seems said ips require paying large sums of money to isps. My poiny was more that with the current mainstream internet (http websockets etc) it would require you to run a local service/proxy that can interpret a global id and route to basicly any small server with said resource. Unfortunatly i dont think its possible to build such a thing that would just work across browsers if embedded into a standard webpage.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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      5 months ago

      It’s not the only free DNS service.

      It’s only a good registrar if you don’t care about privacy and you’re ok with their selection of TLDs (selected only from registries without privacy).

      The free accounts do not benefit from DDoS protection. Re-read their terms of service, they’re vague on purpose. If you were ever DDoS’ed (I don’t know who would bother btw but that’s another discussion) they’d just drop you.

      You can establish the tunneling thing on your own with any VPS.

      The problem with cloudflare is that we’re missing three other cloudflares to move to if they decide to pull evil shit.

      You can and should diversify your services and spread them to different providers that are easy to switch. I’ve been with “all in one” providers before, they inevitably end up leveraging their convenience into all sorts of crap. But until you get burned a couple of times they look really good.

      • gkpy@feddit.org
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        5 months ago

        It’s not the only free DNS service.

        can i get some alternatives. currently basically using cf pretty much just for dns, but would really like to switch

          • gkpy@feddit.org
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            5 months ago

            that looks great, thanks o/

            EDIT: looks like you can only manage 1 domain before having to contact their support

            • Mora@pawb.social
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              5 months ago

              As it is run by volunteers, they probably want to keep corporate (or domain hoarders) off their platform unless they pay.

              • gkpy@feddit.org
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                5 months ago

                makes sense, they support plenty of donation options, if that’s suggested/a requirement to let me transfer in more than 1 :)

            • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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              5 months ago

              Contact support and tell them how many you need and they’ll try to accommodate you. There were a lot of people abusing the service and hosting hundreds of domains so now they’re making everybody request them explicitly unfortunately. They’ve also had to suspend their .dedyn.io DDNS service indefinitely because of the abuse.

              That’s why we can’t have nice things.

              Please read up on DNSSEC because you will be required to turn it on for every domain you host with them.

      • lud@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        It’s only a good registrar if you don’t care about privacy and you’re ok with their selection of TLDs (selected only from registries without privacy).

        I wish they supported my country’s two CCTLDs but other than that I’m very happy. I would never buy any of the crazy vanity TLDs anyways.

        I mostly own .com domains and two CCTLDs domains.

    • wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      there is just one

      Well it’s cloudflare, not cloudsflare. Maybe overcasthosting, or sunblockservers…

      • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 months ago

        I am not sure what that would accomplish.

        I have all that, but I still use cf for a ton of stuff.