Cloudflare Interview Questions and Answers

1. What is Cloudflare?

   • Answer: Cloudflare is a content delivery network (CDN), DDoS mitigation provider, and internet security company. It sits between a website's visitors and its origin server, improving performance, security, and reliability.

2. How does Cloudflare improve website performance?

   • Answer: Cloudflare uses a global network of servers to cache static content (images, CSS, JavaScript) closer to users. This reduces latency and improves page load times. It also optimizes images and uses other performance enhancing techniques like HTTP/2 and Brotli compression.

3. Explain Cloudflare's role in DDoS protection.

   • Answer: Cloudflare's globally distributed network absorbs and mitigates DDoS attacks before they reach the origin server. Its sophisticated algorithms identify and filter malicious traffic, protecting websites from being overwhelmed.

4. What are Cloudflare Workers?

   • Answer: Cloudflare Workers are a serverless platform that allows developers to run JavaScript code at the edge of Cloudflare's network. This enables fast and scalable execution of custom functions, such as API gateways, microservices, and custom security rules.

5. Describe Cloudflare's role in website security.

   • Answer: Cloudflare provides multiple layers of security, including a web application firewall (WAF), bot management, and SSL/TLS encryption. It protects websites from various threats, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and malicious bots.

6. What is a CDN and how does it benefit websites?

   • Answer: A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a geographically distributed group of servers that work together to deliver content to users. It benefits websites by improving performance, reducing latency, enhancing security, and increasing scalability.

7. Explain the difference between Cloudflare's Free and Paid plans.

   • Answer: Cloudflare's free plan offers basic features like CDN, DDoS protection, and SSL. Paid plans provide advanced features such as enhanced security, performance optimization tools, dedicated support, and higher bandwidth limits.

8. How does Cloudflare handle SSL/TLS certificates?

   • Answer: Cloudflare provides free and paid SSL certificates through Let's Encrypt and other providers. It automatically handles certificate generation, installation, and renewal, simplifying the process for website owners.

9. What is Cloudflare's Web Application Firewall (WAF)?

   • Answer: Cloudflare's WAF protects websites from various web application attacks, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and cross-site request forgery (CSRF). It filters malicious requests before they reach the origin server.

10. How does Cloudflare's DNS service work?

    • Answer: Cloudflare's DNS service is highly available and performant. It acts as a recursive resolver, improving speed and reliability of name resolution for websites. It offers features like DNSSEC for added security.

11. What is Cloudflare Stream?

    • Answer: Cloudflare Stream is a video hosting platform that offers various features like video hosting, delivery, and analytics. It is integrated with Cloudflare's CDN for optimal performance.

12. What is Cloudflare Pages?

    • Answer: Cloudflare Pages is a serverless platform for building and deploying websites and web applications. It supports various frameworks like React, Vue.js, and Angular.

13. Explain the concept of "edge computing" in the context of Cloudflare.

    • Answer: Cloudflare utilizes edge computing by bringing computation and data storage closer to users. This reduces latency and improves performance by processing requests at the nearest data center to the user.

14. How does Cloudflare handle caching?

    • Answer: Cloudflare intelligently caches static content like images, CSS, and JavaScript to reduce server load and improve performance. It uses various caching mechanisms and strategies, including caching based on HTTP headers.

15. What are some common use cases for Cloudflare Workers?

    • Answer: Common use cases include building custom APIs, implementing serverless functions, creating microservices, and augmenting security with custom rules.

16. Explain Cloudflare's rate limiting feature.

    • Answer: Cloudflare's rate limiting protects websites from brute-force attacks and other abuse by restricting the number of requests from a single IP address or a range of IP addresses within a specific time frame.

17. How does Cloudflare handle HTTP/3?

    • Answer: Cloudflare supports HTTP/3, which offers improved performance and reliability compared to HTTP/2. It utilizes QUIC, a transport protocol designed for better connection management.

18. What is Cloudflare Tunnel?

    • Answer: Cloudflare Tunnel allows creating secure connections between internal servers and Cloudflare's network, enabling secure access to internal applications from anywhere.

19. What is Argo Tunnel? How does it differ from Cloudflare Tunnel?

    • Answer: Argo Tunnel (now deprecated in favor of Cloudflare Tunnel) provided similar functionality to Cloudflare Tunnel, but Cloudflare Tunnel offers improved features and is the recommended solution.

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