Cloudflare servers don't own IPs anymore so how do they connect to the internet? (blog.cloudflare.com)

Article summary

Cloudflare's servers no longer own IP addresses, and instead use a shared IP address per data center, with each server assigned a range of TCP/UDP ports. This approach allows for more efficient use of IP addresses and improves performance. The company's egress network design has evolved to accommodate the growing variety of traffic and the need for geofencing. Cloudflare's use of anycast for ingress and unicast for egress has been modified to share IP addresses among servers.

Main themes

• Cloudflare's network architecture
• IP address sharing
• anycast and unicast
• geofencing
• internet governance
• NAT and IPv6
• censorship resistance

What commenters say

• Cloudflare's approach to sharing IP addresses among servers is a form of carrier-grade NAT, which can be seen as breaking the internet model.
• The internet's original design flaw of tying IP addresses to specific content or individuals is being addressed by Cloudflare's approach.
• The use of anycast for egress is not possible due to routing issues, and Cloudflare's solution is a workaround.
• The implementation of anycast relies on the stability of BGP routes, which can be seen as luck or happenstance.
• Cloudflare's system is a natural consequence of how BGP works and is an elegant solution.
• The approach taken by Cloudflare can be seen as a form of censorship resistance, but also raises concerns about the internet becoming too reliant on a single entity.
• IPv6 could potentially solve the issue of IP address exhaustion, but its adoption is not yet widespread.