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Cloudflare

What is Cloudflare?

Cloudflare is a company whose network sits between visitors and a website. It hosts DNS, caches pages, filters attacks and can publish a service without opening firewall ports.

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What it is

A business can point its domain at Cloudflare for DNS hosting. It can also turn on the proxy, which means visitors connect to Cloudflare first and Cloudflare then connects to the server behind it. It does several jobs from that position:

  • CDN and caching: copies of pages and images are stored near visitors, so pages load faster.
  • Attack protection: it absorbs denial-of-service floods and runs a web application firewall that blocks common malicious requests.
  • TLS certificates: free certificates at the edge give visitors the padlock and an encrypted connection.
  • Cloudflare Tunnel: software on your server makes an outbound connection to Cloudflare, so a service can be published without opening inbound ports.
  • Turnstile: a CAPTCHA alternative that checks whether a form visitor is a person.

Why it matters to a business

  • Speed and uptime: cached pages load fast, and attack traffic is filtered before it reaches your server.
  • Fewer open ports: a tunnel keeps the server hidden from direct inbound connections, so the firewall has less to defend.
  • Traffic passes through them: with the proxy on, Cloudflare decrypts and re-encrypts every request and response on its way through. That is how caching and filtering work, and it should be a deliberate choice.
  • Mistakes show up fast: a wrong DNS record can take the site down, and a wrong cache rule can keep showing visitors stale pages after you change them.

How KawaConnect works with Cloudflare

We use Cloudflare for DNS on the websites we host, and client sites sit behind its proxy with caching. We publish sites and internal tools through Cloudflare Tunnel instead of opening ports, and we use Turnstile on forms.

We manage the DNS records and cache rules, but the Cloudflare account itself should belong to the business, so it keeps control of its domain if it ever changes providers. The server behind the proxy is covered in web hosting.

Related services

Websites

Design, build and hosting, with DNS, caching and form protection set up.

Network security

Fewer exposed ports and traffic filtered before it reaches your systems.

Managed IT

Account ownership, records and rules documented and kept current.

Learn more

Want Cloudflare set up properly?

Tell us about your site and we will explain what to turn on.

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