I heard a rumour[1] that you guys drop users on smaller plans when they get hit. Supposedly people get an e-mail
WHY WAS MY SITE TEMPORARILY DEACTIVATED?
CloudFlare runs a globally distributed network serving millions of websites. Sometimes a large DDOS attack to one of our Free or Pro customers may degrade network performance. In these cases, we may temporarily remove the website under attack to avoid network degradation.
Just like there's no such thing as "unlimited data storage" there isn't really such a thing as "unlimited DDoS protection." I assume there's SOME limits on how much you get with a free or even $20 plan. I can only imagine what the companies that specialize in DDoS protection charge.
Sure. But if protection starts at $200/mo (CloudFlare Business) then it's not really for smaller sites with a controversial opinion. For $200 you can get two dedicated servers with DDoS protection on top.
2 dedicated servers might buy you ~3-4GB/s of DDoS protection. Cloudflair's base model protects from around 100GB/s, which what commonly takes banks offline (Bank of American, or Chase be taken down with ~70GB/s).
They gave talk at defcon21 about migrating a 300-400GB/s DDoS (Roughly 1.25% of all internet traffic in the US at the time was that DDoS).
When you start getting into DDoS's >300GB/s your DDoS will start causing issues for providers, and backbone companies, not just Cloudflair.
It's fortunate that Cloudflare don't have a monopoly on serving HTTP content with DDoS protection in that case, although perhaps they do have a monopoly on providing those services for free.
We also give free service to various NGOs/activist groups/etc at the "we accept huge DDoS and won't shut you off level" -- https://www.cloudflare.com/galileo FWIW
I heard a rumour[1] that you guys drop users on smaller plans when they get hit. Supposedly people get an e-mail
WHY WAS MY SITE TEMPORARILY DEACTIVATED?
CloudFlare runs a globally distributed network serving millions of websites. Sometimes a large DDOS attack to one of our Free or Pro customers may degrade network performance. In these cases, we may temporarily remove the website under attack to avoid network degradation.
and they're on their own. Is it true?
[1] http://www.webhostingtalk.pl/topic/49090-cloudflare-polski-o...