In this day and age you do actually need a heck if a lot of security when building or even entering a website. It goes without saying Distributed Denial of Service aka DDoS attacks are still one of the major bugs of a developer/webmaster managing a website - and a complete pain for visitors to the said website if a DDoS attack has been employed by a malicious hacker.
Cloudflare for the most are one if the worlds leading technology companies dealing with website security, providing protection from a wide array of attacks which include bots and DDoS. Being a developer myself - I actually think Cloudflare does have its uses... However... Something has begun to irritate myself, and quite a few of my visitors to a couple of websites I have propagated - my email is hit by complaints every day because of this...
Cloudflare protection comes with a lovely splash screen on entry to websites using the technology - a sort of cross between a page break and URL redirection - which moves between Cloudflare servers and the server your website is hosted on. The initial splash screen suggests a 5-second redirection, which is largely dependent on the speed of your connection and in some respects your server.
The 5-seconds is not so bad if it is indeed 5-seconds and not 10-seconds, also 5-seconds is not so bad if you are not hit with the recent adoption of a Captcha that also has started to grace the Cloudflare splash screen... Thus creating a longer time to wait until you enter a website.
All good that protection is in place to stop attacks from hackers, great that bots are not reducing the website to unusable or the like... But for love and money... If I wanted speeds of the old dial-up modems and 1mb broadband - I would either try time travel or dig out the old AT&T modem and connect up to the telephone.
I am noticing more and more Crypto Websites incorporating the Cloudflare technology, either by host service provision or via developer choice - but seriously... Adding hCapcha or the like to drag out the initial 5-seconds to combat bots and attacks by hackers, I think has largely become not just an Irritation, but a put off - I am a stickler for speed... I did not spend good money on technology and high speed broadband only to be slowed down when browsing.
But hey-ho... What can we as devs and visitors actually do about it other than not use any Cloudflare technology or avoiding those sites that use the protection? This is not the ideal approach or solution. Webmasters do need to themselves protect some level of income coming into their website - as visitors you cannot expect a free ride for the main part. But like me if you like a particular website and it's ability to let's say... Earn yourself a bit of Crypto from home, on the go, or at the office then you are going to want longevity in that said website, this goes without saying.
What is a fair balance for developers and users in combating bit, spam and dual accounts at Crypto earning websites?
Suggestions on a postcard into the comments please... I think until the happy world of development can come up with an absolute sure-fire way of dealing with DDoS and bots, we will continue to see services such as Cloudflare being adopted and splashed across our device screens.
In no way am I trying to say Cloudflare are not good at what they do... For the most they are great... I just want to push the developers to come up with something quicker - because going back to 1998 in page load speeds is becoming very irritating for myself - as I say, I like to have my foot on the gas when surfing the Web.
Maybe that is just personal preference - but I know there are millions more out there like me having those moments of, "ffs open the darn page already!"
What do you think of DDoS Protection, the 5-second redirects etc via such companies like Cloudflare?
A good thing or a bad thing?
