No Need for Hardware

Cloudflare Gives Customers Traffic Control at the Edge

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 29, 2016) - Cloudflare, the leading Internet performance and security company, today announced two Cloudflare Traffic products: Cloudflare Traffic Control and Cloudflare Traffic Manager. Utilizing Cloudflare's global network, customers will have increased control over how their traffic is handled based on their unique needs.

"Cloudflare operates one of the world's largest global networks that provides a unique opportunity for customers to control where and how their traffic operates at the edge," said Matthew Prince, co-founder & CEO of Cloudflare. "Four million customers rely on us to keep their infrastructure and web properties up and running across the globe, regardless of traffic volume, server location, and threats. The future doesn't come in a box, so we are introducing offerings that give customers full control of the traffic that they work hard to acquire in a scalable way that no piece of hardware could manage."

Cloudflare Traffic Control: A Global Backbone for the Most Vulnerable Parts of the Internet 

Cloudflare Traffic Control gives customers the ability to set specific limits for traffic and to shape or block it based on the number of requests per second. With this new offering, customers can ensure that their visitors have the best online experience with uncompromised availability, regardless of a sudden flash sale, outage, or traffic spike that could otherwise add friction to their online experience.

In addition to huge volumetric DDoS attacks, there has been an uptick in simpler and cheaper attacks that easily knock down web applications by targeting a specific part of a site -- whether it be an API endpoint, login page, or search function. These smaller scale yet targeted attacks can take even a secure Internet property offline in seconds with just a few hundred requests.

Mobile APIs, often less protected than web applications, will especially benefit from Traffic Control guarding against similar request spikes as well as any nefarious attacks directed at less visible API endpoints.

Traffic Control offers five features for customers securing their traffic and protecting themselves from targeted attacks:

• Rate limiting: Set specific request limits, per second or for a longer time period, for individual URLs or patterns, and with matching parameters including IP address, headers, and HTTP response codes
• Custom responses: Return application-appropriate custom responses, such as JSON for API clients and HTML for browsers
• Traffic profiling: Respond differently to GET and POST requests, useful for protecting logins or forms
• Thoughtful configuration: Test rules to measure impact, and then apply different mitigation options to block or throttle
• Speedy propagation: Make changes globally within seconds

"Customers are looking for more control over who visits their site or application and how traffic is routed through their application," said John Graham-Cumming, CTO of Cloudflare. "With Traffic Control, we're able to secure vulnerable resources in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible, keeping our customers online and making for a safer Internet."