This guide explains how to enable a CDN to optimize an Infomaniak Web Hosting service.

Introduction

• CDN stands for "Content Delivery Network".
• A CDN stores a copy of your website's content (images, videos, CSS/JS files) on multiple servers distributed geographically.
• When a user accesses your site, the CDN provides this content from the server closest to their location, reducing loading times:
  • Your site loads faster for visitors, which can reduce the bounce rate and improve the user experience.
  • By distributing the content, the CDN reduces the load on your main server, improving its performance and availability.
  • Some CDNs offer security features such as protection against DDoS attacks and data security.

Setting up a CDN

To use a CDN, you will generally need to make adjustments to your domain name configuration, specifically at the DNS record level. This will direct traffic from your website to the CDN's network of servers. In general, the process is as follows:

1. Create an account on the website of the CDN of your choice and add your site to it.
2. Modify the DNS zone of your domain name according to the instructions provided by the CDN.
3. Test your site to ensure that the CDN is working correctly.

Specific Cloudflare Guide

For customers who wish to optimize their website against overloads caused by heavy bot traffic, using a CDN such as Cloudflare is often recommended. The Cloudflare CDN optimizes the performance and security of a website with features including:

• caching of a website's static content
• minification of HTML, CSS, and Javascript code
• basic anti-DDoS protection
• etc.

To set up Cloudflare:

1. If necessary, create an account with Cloudflare.
2. Add the domain name of the website in question.
3. Transfer all DNS records from the domain's DNS zone to Cloudflare (A, MX, TXT, NS records, etc.).
4. In the Infomaniak Manager, modify the DNS settings for the domain in question using the DNS servers provided by Cloudflare.
   • Configure DKIM and DNSSEC if necessary.
   • Any DNS addition or modification may take up to 48 hours to propagate.

Please note: mod_cloudflare is enabled by default on all paid web hosting plans.

Enable Cloudflare Rate Limiting

By default, Cloudflare simply acts as an intermediary between the website and Infomaniak, forwarding all requests to the Infomaniak servers. Thus, during traffic spikes or attacks, the requests still reach the origin server, but with Cloudflare IP addresses, making it difficult to manage mitigation on a shared server.

Implementing "rate limiting" rules in Cloudflare's application firewall is now an effective solution. This feature limits the number of requests sent to the server, blocking aggressive scans and protecting the server against excessive overloads.

And also…

… Amazon CloudFront

If you already use AWS services, CloudFront is easy to set up. Create a distribution, configure the settings, and link it to your site.

… Fastly

Sign up for Fastly, configure your service by adding your website and defining the caching settings. Fastly offers advanced configuration options.