Cloudflare Overview
1. Foundation Knowledge
We’ll cover the essentials of Cloudflare so you’re rock solid on the basics:
- CDN (Content Delivery Network) – caching + speed improvement.
- DDoS Protection – stopping floods of malicious traffic.
- WAF (Web Application Firewall) – blocking attacks like SQL injection, XSS.
- Zero Trust / Tunnels (Argo Tunnel) – secure connection between your machines and Cloudflare’s edge without exposing public IPs.
- DNS – Cloudflare is the fastest DNS resolver globally.
- Workers – serverless functions that run at the edge.
- R2 / D1 / KV – Cloudflare’s storage + DB services.
2. Practical Setup for You
Given your stack (ASP.NET Core MVC, EF Core, RabbitMQ, Identity, AI services, etc.) here’s what matters most:
- Cloudflare Tunnels → secure access to your Pi + Jetson cluster without port forwarding.
- Rate Limiting → protect APIs in LLCAIMACHINE.COM from abuse.
- SSL/TLS → always force HTTPS.
- Caching Rules → speed up your ManOfFocus.com media (images, CSS, JS).
- Workers → pre-process API responses at edge, or run AI checks before hitting backend.
- Access → private dashboards (Empire Ring / Boardrooms) can be gated behind Cloudflare Access.
3. Enterprise-Class Features for Your Projects
- Real IP forwarding middleware in ASP.NET Core to ensure you log the real visitor IP (not Cloudflare’s).
- Firewall Rules → block by ASN, country, IP ranges.
- Custom Pages → replace ugly 502/503 with your branding.
- Load Balancing → if you later distribute services across multiple nodes in South Dakota + overseas.
- Cloudflare Stream → could host video for your membership site instead of YouTube/Vimeo.
4. Developer Tools
- Wrangler CLI → manage Workers and deploy from command line.
- Pages → free hosting for static content (could hold your MANaissance previews).
- Analytics → per-request logging, export to your SQL or ML pipelines.
5. Cost Breakdown
- Free Plan → DNS, SSL, DDoS protection, Argo Tunnel basics.
- Pro ($20/mo) → WAF, image optimization.
- Business ($200/mo) → SLA, custom rulesets.
- Workers KV, R2, D1 → pay-as-you-go, pennies for dev.
6. Today’s Action Plan
- Register your domains in Cloudflare if not already.
- Set up Cloudflare Tunnel for your Raspberry Pi + Jetson edge lab (keeps your IP hidden).
- Add ASP.NET Core middleware for real IPs.
- Configure firewall + rate limiting for your login endpoints.
- Experiment with a Cloudflare Worker – e.g., pre-caching your sitemap or auto-generating AI tags for posts.
