Would Cloudflare be good a way to decentralize a website?

Alan_Rowell

So, let's assume I have a few VPS instances, is it better to setup a local proxy on each one to load balance that way, or should I just use Cloudflare. One advantage with Cloudflare is obviously the fail over mechanism that redirect traffic away from servers that is currently down...

But is it decentralized?

Samuel_Oldfield

Your solution may be decentralized but not fault tolerant unfortunately. Using the same domain and multiple servers results in DNS load balancing which is basically Round Robin or similar, it does balance the load pretty well but if one host goes down your visitors wont be redirected.

While Cloudflare solve that problem by providing load balancing servers in many locations and smart routing the solution is fault tolerant, but not decentralized because Cloudflare itself is a centralized entity. 🤦‍♂️

Using different domains/subdomains for each of your servers would be the proper way to decentralize your web application, it was common back in the past with mirrors and is still common today in some cases, but unfortunately that's not a very convenient solution for visitors.

Marco_Weiss

Excellent question, I suppose you could call Cloudflare decentralized in some manners, it depends on what you want to do. For a fully legit application, sure no problem. But if there's any risk to get shutdown it's not really the solution you're looking for.

My personal approach is to use both Cloudflare and no Cloudflare. Let me elaborate. I have some servers, let's call them A, B and C. Each has it's own domain i.e: A.example.org, B.example.org and C.example.org, they all has their own valid ssl certificates so not depending on Cloudflare. Then on top of this I added a Cloudflare domain which is basically example.com (note the difference .com and .org).

So what do I get from this approach? well the only drawback I can think of is that I don't get Cloudflares fancy DDoS protection, but I get mirrors, a decentralized cluster and a smart loadbalancer powered by Cloudflare for the average Joe who think mirrors and decentralization is something evil because that's what he's being told 🙂

Alan_Rowell

@Marco_Weiss, and best of all. You seem to have a working plan B if the worst thing happened and Cloudflare for some reason decided to shut you down.

Now this brings up another concern, how decentralized is 99Stack Cloud? Can I trust that I won't be shut down and loose all my work? The amount of locations looks promising but that won't be of much help if my account is banned

Sebastian_Mannerheim

Alan_Rowell and best of all. You seem to have a working plan B if the worst thing happened and Cloudflare for some reason decided to shut you down.

Now this brings up another concern, how decentralized is 99Stack Cloud? Can I trust that I won't be shut down and loose all my work? The amount of locations looks promising but that won't be of much help if my account is banned

I get the feeling that not many people has ever been banned from here, but yeah it's not impossible. There's terms of service, an acceptable use policy and of course the law. If you obey all of them you shouldn't have anything to worry about. But in any case, it's always a good idea to have your own off site backup.

If we're gonna talk decentralization, 99Stack Cloud is actually decentralized, or at least a centralized layer on top of a decentralized network. Cloudflare aside, you can actually just choose region A instead of region B if what you want to do is illegal in region B but legal in region A. I'm not sure about the exact structure, I guess you'll have to open a support ticket if you're unsure and simply ask. That's what they recommend, at least.

Kenneth_Crayton

Alan_Rowell @Marco_Weiss, and best of all. You seem to have a working plan B if the worst thing happened and Cloudflare for some reason decided to shut you down.

Actually Cloudflare doesn't provide load balancing and failover for free, they're kind of expensive tho still cheaper and more reliable than the competition. On the free plans you get regular ordinary DNS load balancing.

The_Moose

Sebastian_Mannerheim I get the feeling that not many people has ever been banned from here

We don't issue bans unless it's explicitly required in order to prevent additional damage, caused by serious violations of our terms of service or even illegal activity. Read the terms of service and acceptable usage documents and respect the law. Also use common sense and you'll have nothing to worry about.

Sebastian_Mannerheim If we're gonna talk decentralization, 99Stack Cloud is actually decentralized, or at least a centralized layer on top of a decentralized network.

This is partially correct, our decentralization is mostly relevant when it comes to fault tolerance, stability and censorship resistance. Legally speaking, there's no denial that the United States do have a huge influence over most data centers. Which means that American laws regulate our products.

Our platform on the other hand operates under Swedish law, which is generally better in terms of privacy. Tho we don't trust the law only for privacy and security. Strong encryption, math and decentralization is our main advantage, when it comes to protecting your privacy and your security.

Marco_Weiss

Kenneth_Crayton I noticed that if you point multiple entries of the same domain to different IP's via cloudflare proxy and remove the node you're currently connected to, it'll instantly switch to a different node. That's great for DNS load balancing, if you don't use their proxy, best you can get is 2 minutes before the DNS server assign you to a different node which is online.

Alan_Rowell

Kenneth_Crayton Actually Cloudflare doesn't provide load balancing and failover for free, they're kind of expensive tho still cheaper and more reliable than the competition. On the free plans you get regular ordinary DNS load balancing.

Thank you, didn't know that before. 👍️