EEVblog is now running through CloudFlare

[EEVblog]

As the title says. You shouldn't have even noticed the difference.
But the site should be faster, and better protected now. This includes the forum.

[Towger]

Any update on TapaTalk?

[ve7xen]

Definitely seems faster, even though CloudFlare can only cache static assets. I wonder if they do some additional opportunistic loading of content so when the browser requests images/scripts etc., the edge node has already got them in memory from the main server.

Nice one Dave.

[Neilm]

Interesting - it seems a bit slower for me. There definitely seems to be a bit of a lag as the pages load

[BurtyB]

Today is a sad news day .

[mariush]

It may be a coincidence but since the change whenever i'm on eevblog here, firefox is sluggish and eats cpu cycles. Literally as I type this, from time to type it stops printing characters on screen for a couple of seconds becuase I guess Firefox is poorly threaded and eats 100% of a cpu core.

Looking at what runs in that thread, it seems the stuff that eats cpu is the javascript engine of Firefox. I'll keep investigating..

later edit: found the culprit after closing each tab in the browser, it was another website's scripts.

[GiskardReventlov]

I notice cloudflare obfuscates email addresses in posts. Is that considered a good feature?

[BravoV]

Just experienced error 522 connection time out reported by Cloudfare, a single refresh made it gone.

Never had this before at the forum, either the site was totally down, or it went through smoothly.

[EEVblog]

I notice cloudflare obfuscates email addresses in posts. Is that considered a good feature?

What do you mean? No ones email address should be visible on the forum.
Do you mean just typed addresses like billg@microsoft.com

[BravoV]

Just reporting, 2nd times experienced this error again, and the forum page restored after hitting that green "Retry for a live version" button.

Worst part is I was in the middle of composing a quite long PM, pressed the review button and hit by this error, there goes all my composed PM and had to re-do it again. 

Cloudfare hick ups ?

[EEVblog]

Just reporting, 2nd times experienced this error again, and the forum page restored after hitting that green "Retry for a live version" button.

No other reports of this so far?

[Bored@Work]

No other reports of this so far?

I had this a day or two ago. Pressed reload in the browser (not the green button on the page), and could continue. Didn't bother to take a screen snapshot.

[BurtyB]

Just reporting, 2nd times experienced this error again, and the forum page restored after hitting that green "Retry for a live version" button.

This is the why I dislike Cloudflare - I've seen the same on many sites using Cloudflare and in some cases it totally breaks the functionality of the site (forms not submitting correctly, login cookies going astray, etc.).

[Rigby]

no issues for me.  seems lots faster.

[mariush]

Just reporting, 2nd times experienced this error again, and the forum page restored after hitting that green "Retry for a live version" button.

Worst part is I was in the middle of composing a quite long PM, pressed the review button and hit by this error, there goes all my composed PM and had to re-do it again. 

If you're using Firefox, install the Lazarus Form Recovery extension : http://getlazarus.com/

You can then just go back to the comment form and right click in the text box and paste the last version memorized by Lazarus.

[BravoV]

Mariush, thanks, I will take a look on that. 

Mean while, I've experienced > 5 same errors today. 

I don't have the expertise on this global web cache infrastructure, just thinking is it possible that I'm the only the genius on earth ... <sarcasm mode :ON> ... that have invented the idea of this ultra advance algorithm ? 

Looks like the current main loop algorithm there is like this :

IF <requested web page is available at the cache> AND <and cache is not expired (under certain criteria)>

   THEN <reply the request from the cache>  ... (life as usual)

   ELSE <pop out the error screen, and ask the user to go directly to the live/real server>

My new invention :

IF <requested web page is available at the cache> AND <and cache is not expired (under certain criteria)>

   THEN <reply the request from the cache>  ... (life as usual)

   ELSE <forward the request "AUTOMATICALLY" to the real/live server and let it handles the request it self directly>   


Just wondering I managed to patent this ultra cool elite algorithm, I must be filthy rich right ?  <sarcasm:OFF>

Dave, don't mean to bash this feature, actually I really appreciate your efforts and intentions to improve your user's experiences at your web site, but so far what my experiences is this thing is making it worse.

Before this, I only had smooth and responsive web experiences from eevblog, or totally offlined/dead because of the server problems, which is normal and totally expected.

Is this thing is still in "trial" period or you already signed the contract with them ? 

[GiskardReventlov]

What do you mean? No ones email address should be visible on the forum.
Do you mean just typed addresses like billg@microsoft.com

What I see is this:

"Do you mean just typed addresses like [email protected]"

The link goes to
http://www.cloudflare.com/email-protection#84e6ede8e8e3c4e9ede7f6ebf7ebe2f0aae7ebe9

[baljemmett]

My new invention :

IF <requested web page is available at the cache> AND <and cache is not expired (under certain criteria)>

   THEN <reply the request from the cache>  ... (life as usual)

   ELSE <forward the request "AUTOMATICALLY" to the real/live server and let it handles the request it self directly>   


Just wondering I managed to patent this ultra cool elite algorithm, I must be filthy rich right ?  <sarcasm:OFF>

Isn't that exactly what it's doing, per the information on the error page?  It was Dave's server that had its fingers stuck in its ears when CloudFlare forwarded the request, so it put the error page up as a result of not being able to retrieve the page you requested from the backend...

[ve7xen]

My new invention :

IF <requested web page is available at the cache> AND <and cache is not expired (under certain criteria)>

   THEN <reply the request from the cache>  ... (life as usual)

   ELSE <forward the request "AUTOMATICALLY" to the real/live server and let it handles the request it self directly>   


Just wondering I managed to patent this ultra cool elite algorithm, I must be filthy rich right ?  <sarcasm:OFF>

Isn't that exactly what it's doing, per the information on the error page?  It was Dave's server that had its fingers stuck in its ears when CloudFlare forwarded the request, so it put the error page up as a result of not being able to retrieve the page you requested from the backend...

Yes, this is exactly how CloudFlare works, give or take some details. The problem here is that CloudFlare was apparently unable to contact the backend (Dave's server).

My guess would be that Dave's server has had some per-host connection limits or other "security" features enabled, and that now many requests are coming from the CloudFlare frontends rather than diverse user addresses and tripping those limits, causing intermittent failure. Worse, this will probably be isolated to users in certain "busier" regions or the like, so for many users will probably never happen.

Also Firefox anyway saves input form data in the history, so if a submit fails you can usually just go back and the boxes will still be filled in. Seems to work on this forum. Some JavaScripts break it, but it usually works without any addons.

[hikariuk]

What do you mean? No ones email address should be visible on the forum.
Do you mean just typed addresses like billg@microsoft.com

What I see is this:

"Do you mean just typed addresses like [email protected]"

The link goes to
http://www.cloudflare.com/email-protection#84e6ede8e8e3c4e9ede7f6ebf7ebe2f0aae7ebe9

Odd; I just see the e-mail address he wrote...

[ve7xen]

What do you mean? No ones email address should be visible on the forum.
Do you mean just typed addresses like billg@microsoft.com

What I see is this:

"Do you mean just typed addresses like [email protected]"

The link goes to
http://www.cloudflare.com/email-protection#84e6ede8e8e3c4e9ede7f6ebf7ebe2f0aae7ebe9

Odd; I just see the e-mail address he wrote...

Only if Javascript is enabled. Presumably to prevent scraping of addresses by bots.

[GiskardReventlov]

Only if Javascript is enabled. Presumably to prevent scraping of addresses by bots.

But bots have for some time now used ecmascript (javascript) libraries to extract things attempting to hide behind javascript.  I haven't kept track of how much javascript the bots run. It's configurable I'm sure. Bots and screenscraping are a high art (low art?).

Using SSL (i.e. https) may be a better solution.

[BurtyB]

I doubt SSL will make much of a difference since CPU is relatively cheap these days and whole websites can be rendered as they would in a "real" browser by using tools like phantomjs.

[GiskardReventlov]

I doubt SSL will make much of a difference since CPU is relatively cheap these days and whole websites can be rendered as they would in a "real" browser by using tools like phantomjs.

I did say bots use js. SSL is just good sense these days.  At the very least for authenticating. It seems this forum is all plain text authentication.  Pretty old-school. And makes it vulnerable to lots of devious stuff.

I don't know if bots would go to the trouble of making SSL connections or not.  You're asserting they do.
Cheap is always a relative term. Multiply cheap times millions or billions and then what might have been considered cheap isn't.  CPU hardware might be cheap but running it at max/overclock isn't so cheap when the electron bill comes.

[EEVblog]

What do you mean? No ones email address should be visible on the forum.
Do you mean just typed addresses like billg@microsoft.com

What I see is this:
"Do you mean just typed addresses like [email protected]"
The link goes to
http://www.cloudflare.com/email-protection#84e6ede8e8e3c4e9ede7f6ebf7ebe2f0aae7ebe9

I just see the proper email address with the usual mailto:billg@microsoft.com down the bottom
I can't click on it because I don't have a mail client software, i use gmail.

[Len]

What do you mean? No ones email address should be visible on the forum.
Do you mean just typed addresses like billg@microsoft.com

What I see is this:
"Do you mean just typed addresses like [email protected]"
The link goes to
http://www.cloudflare.com/email-protection#84e6ede8e8e3c4e9ede7f6ebf7ebe2f0aae7ebe9

I just see the proper email address with the usual mailto:billg@microsoft.com down the bottom
I can't click on it because I don't have a mail client software, i use gmail.

Using Firefox, I see the email address, but looking the HTML it actually has the link that GiskardReventlov posted. There seems to be some Javascript magic going on to display the email address, which of course doesn't always work.

[Rerouter]

just had about a minute of failed connections, so just in-case here is what i got,

[Andy Watson]

Ditto

[Ton]

Just been down for a 12+ hour period for me,

the usual connection to Cloudflare is ok, but not to the server.

br ton

[EEVblog]

This outage had nothing to do with Cloudflare for those wondering, completely the fault of my web host HostGator.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

Looks like you got your free month.

From HostGator

We guarantee that your site will be up 99.9% of the time we host it. This guarantee includes both network and server failures. If your site isn't up 99.9% in any one month we will issue a service credit to your account for the month.

[Wytnucls]

Lost the image links to the database in one of my previous posts. The site won't accept any picture upload now. Keeps saying over the 2000kB limit while the file is only 360kB.

[mariush]

No, at best he will get credit for the hours the server was down.

Seriously Dave, this Hostgator is so unreliable if I were you I would ditch them.

I have dedicated servers rented at another company and other than the rare DDOS on the network every few months (happens everywhere), the servers are rock solid.  And that email spam thing i noticed on twitter... not sure what's that about but I never had problems with this company I work with.
They recently added configurations with the latest quad core with hyperthreading from intel, 8GB and more, from about 135$ a month, gigabit ports with 10TB included... the only downside for you is they're self-managed, costs about 80$ extra to manage them for you .. but you have kvm over ip included, and you have people to help you out and configure it.
Check them out if you want : http://www.swiftway.net/offer/unmanaged-single-processors/

[Wytnucls]

Disregard last post, seems to be working now. But previous links are still lost.

[GiskardReventlov]

The outage was in utah.
NSA's newest 300,000m2 facility is in utah.
Hostgator just doing the cut-over to route traffic thru nsa.
Move along, nothing to see here.

[miguelvp]

What sucks is that HostMonster (also in Utah) went down as well, maybe they are a client of HostGator.
But mine is a shared one so it was down for less than one hour and I don't care because I don't use it anymore, other than for home projects that require a server.

[Rerouter]

Just another thing I have noticed, the tapatalkdetect.js java-script is 404'ing when the page is loading, this slows thing down by almost a full second on every page load for me, its meant to be coming from server : "cloudflare-nginx"

(found it though the Firefox development tools, something i never knew existed till now [tools / web developer / toggle tools] )

[BurtyB]

What sucks is that HostMonster (also in Utah) went down as well, maybe they are a client of HostGator.

They're both part of EIG so not too surprising.