March 2017 Summaries

On March 24, 2017, the U.S. Senate voted to undo certain Obama-era broadband provider regulations that would have required ISPs to obtain customer consent before sharing personal information such as web browsing history and app usage with third parties. This decision allows ISPs to sell targeted advertising or share personal data without explicit user consent. Cloudflare expressed disappointment, emphasizing the importance of consumer privacy rights and advocating for an "opt-in" rather than "opt-out" standard. Regardless of the outcome in Washington, Cloudflare remains committed to prioritizing customer data sensitivity and privacy compliance worldwide.

Cloudflare has opened its 105th data center in Rome, Italy. This expansion will benefit users in Italy with reduced latency and increased security for over 6 million internet properties. The new data center also serves as a point of redundancy to the existing one in Milan, expanding Cloudflare's Europe network to 29 cities. Additionally, partners such as Altervista, Planetel, and Aruba.it will see improved performance for their customers.

Cloudflare has opened its newest data center in Quito, Ecuador, marking the company's 104th global deployment and expanding its Latin America network to six cities. The new data center is a result of partnership with NAP.EC Internet exchange run by AEPROVI (Asociación de empresas proveedoras de servicios de internet). This expansion contributes to the company's open peering policy, allowing for localized traffic and supporting global internet exchanges. Latin America currently has over 350 million internet users with a fast-growing mobile penetration rate. Cloudflare plans to announce two more South American data centers soon to improve performance and security of six million internet properties.

In March 2017, Cloudflare announced plans to launch new data centers across five continents, starting with Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. This marks their 37th data center in Asia and 103rd globally. The deployment will improve internet speed and security for six million websites. Yerevan is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, known for its rich history, culture, and chess grandmasters per capita.

Cloudflare introduces zero round trip time resumption (0-RTT) for its free service, which significantly speeds up HTTPS connections and improves web experience for users visiting sites regularly. This feature is now enabled by default for all sites on Cloudflare's free service and can be enabled in the Crypto app in the Cloudflare dashboard for paid customers. 0-RTT dramatically speeds up resumed connections, reducing latency and enhancing performance, especially noticeable on mobile networks.

Cloudflare has introduced an AMP linter API for developers to check the correct formatting of their AMP pages before deployment. The API can be used by sending a webpage's AMP markup to the endpoint https://amp.cloudflare.com/q/. If the page contains invalid AMP syntax, the returned message will specify what is wrong and provide a link to the relevant implementation guide. This tool aims to make it easier for developers to move their webpages and sites to AMP format.

Cloudflare is participating in Google NEXT 2017 from March 8th - 10th at Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. They will be discussing their recent partnership with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) through the CDN Interconnect Program. This program allows Cloudflare's servers to establish high-speed interconnections with GCP at various locations worldwide, accelerating dynamic content while reducing bandwidth and egress billing costs. Two prominent joint customers of Cloudflare and Google Cloud Platform, Discord and Quizlet, have shared their performance, security, and cost-savings stories. Michelle Zatlyn, Co-Founder of Cloudflare, will be presenting "A Cloud Networking Blueprint for Securing Your Workloads" on Thursday, March 9th from 11:20 AM to 12:20 PM at Moscone West, Room 2005.

Cloudflare, a web infrastructure company, experienced a serious bug in its parser that caused data flowing through its network to be leaked onto the internet. The bug, dubbed "Cloudbleed," was patched within hours of being discovered but had potential for massive impact due to the scale of Cloudflare's operations. An analysis of log data revealed no evidence of malicious exploitation before patching and that most customers experienced no data leaks. Passwords, credit card numbers, or health records were not found in any instances of leaked data from search engine caches. The company is working to expunge all leaked data from third-party caches and has undertaken a full review of its code for potential vulnerabilities.