{"id":1739,"date":"2020-06-08T01:38:56","date_gmt":"2020-06-07T17:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wesbytes.com\/guide\/?post_type=kb&p=1739"},"modified":"2026-01-12T13:00:27","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T05:00:27","slug":"how-does-cloudflare-work","status":"publish","type":"kb","link":"https:\/\/www.servergigabit.com\/guide\/kb\/how-does-cloudflare-work","title":{"rendered":"How does Cloudflare work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

How does Cloudflare work?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"Cloudflare<\/p>\n

More than just Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, customers rely on Cloudflare\u2019s global network to enhance security, performance and reliability of anything connected to the Internet.<\/p>\n

Cloudflare<\/a> is designed for easy setup. Anyone with a website and their own domain can use Cloudflare regardless of their platform choice. Cloudflare doesn\u2019t require additional hardware, software, or changes to your code.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Security<\/strong><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Cloudflare stops malicious traffic before it reaches your origin web server. Cloudflare analyzes potential threats in visitor requests based on a number of characteristics:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • visitor\u2019s IP address,<\/li>\n
  • resources requested,<\/li>\n
  • request payload and frequency, and<\/li>\n
  • customer-defined firewall rules.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
    \n

    \u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
    \n

    Performance<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

    Cloudflare optimizes the delivery of website resources for your visitors. Cloudflare\u2019s data centers serve your website\u2019s static resources and ask your origin web server for dynamic content. Cloudflare\u2019s global network provides a faster route from your site visitors to our data centers than would be available to a visitor directly requesting your site. Even with Cloudflare between your website and your visitors, resource requests arrive to your visitor sooner.<\/p>\n

    \n

    <\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
    \n

    Reliability<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

    Cloudflare\u2019s globally distributed anycast network routes visitor requests to the nearest Cloudflare data center. \u00a0Cloudflare distributed DNS responds to website visitors with Cloudflare IP addresses for traffic you proxy to Cloudflare. \u00a0This also provides security by hiding the specific IP address of your origin web server.<\/p>\n

    Cloudflare-proxied domains share IP addresses from a pool that belongs to the Cloudflare network. As a result, Cloudflare does not offer dedicated or exclusive IP addresses. Therefore, to reduce the number of Cloudflare IPs that your domain shares with other Cloudflare customer domains. Then, upgrade to a Business or Enterprise plan and upload a Custom SSL certificate.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    How does Cloudflare work? More than just Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, customers rely on Cloudflare\u2019s global network to enhance security, performance and reliability of anything connected to the Internet. Cloudflare is designed for easy setup. Anyone with a website and their own domain can use Cloudflare regardless of their platform choice. Cloudflare doesn\u2019t require additional hardware, software, or changes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"kbtopic":[43],"kbtag":[1124],"class_list":["post-1739","kb","type-kb","status-publish","hentry","kbtopic-cloudflare","kbtag-cloudflare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servergigabit.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kb\/1739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servergigabit.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kb"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servergigabit.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/kb"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servergigabit.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servergigabit.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1739"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.servergigabit.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kb\/1739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5987,"href":"https:\/\/www.servergigabit.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kb\/1739\/revisions\/5987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servergigabit.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"kbtopic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servergigabit.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kbtopic?post=1739"},{"taxonomy":"kbtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servergigabit.com\/guide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kbtag?post=1739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}