The internet is a fantastic invention. We all adore it for different reasons: finding information, connecting with loved ones, streaming our favorite TV shows, or getting almost any goods delivered to your home in a couple of days (or even hours). Yes, the internet is a lovely thing, but even the most lovely things can have significant drawbacks. That can be summed up in two words for the internet: performance and security.
The most aggravating portion of your day can be a bad internet connection or slow-loading pages. At best, you’ll sulk in front of your laptop, frustrated that you won’t be able to see what happens next in this Stranger Things episode. In the worst-case scenario, you’ll be working on a critical project when your internet goes down, shutting all of your tabs and wiping out all of your efforts. There is nothing more dreadful.
Except for the fact that there is. The internet’s darker side is its proclivity for data breaches and lax security. In the physical world, it may be simple to preserve your privacy, but in the virtual world, all bets are off. Inputting your full name, address, and credit card information allows you to make incredibly quick and convenient transactions, but one mistake can result in that information falling into the wrong hands, resulting in identity theft and credit card fraud. It’s a dreadful danger you’re taking every time you add more personal data to the frightening “cloud.”
However, there is a remedy, and it is actually rather simple. Cloudflare, a digital startup, provides a service that improves webpage performance and security. Cloudflare may be used and benefited by any website, from blogs to personal websites to major corporate websites. The following is how it works:
Cloudflare acts as a barrier between you and anyone attempting to steal your data, using over 120 global data centers. When a visitor logs on to a Cloudflare-registered site, Cloudflare checks their IP address to ensure they are not web attackers, malicious bots, or anything else that is generally bad to come across while online. If Cloudflare’s risk rankings decide that an IP address poses a threat, it is either prohibited from entering a site or challenged before proceeding, depending on the site owner’s preferences.
Meanwhile, Cloudflare reduces bandwidth usage (hello, data bill) and speeds up the loading of web pages by caching static content.
The term “static content” refers to content that does not change frequently (think images, Javascript, CSS framing, etc.). Your site won’t have to reload that material every time a visitor arrives on a page if that content is cached on Cloudflare’s network. As a result, your website will load significantly faster than before. Cloudflare saves site owners and users an average of 65 percent more bandwidth.
Although it appears to be too wonderful to be true, the evidence is in the pudding. Cloudflare is responsible for ten percent of the internet’s traffic. It has more web traffic than Twitter, Amazon, Instagram, Bing, and Wikipedia combined, despite the fact that it has only been around since 2009. Cloudflare is on track to take over the world — or at least the World Wide Web – in no time, with more than 10,000 websites signing up every day.
