Cloudflare Proxy Status

In Cloudflare DNS management, the "Proxy Status" is an important setting that you can specify for your DNS records, such as A, AAAA, or CNAME records. When you see the "Proxy Status" set to "Proxied", it means that traffic to your specified record is routed through Cloudflare's global edge network. Here's a detailed explanation of what it means and how it impacts your domain:

1. Enhanced Security

• DDoS Protection: Cloudflare provides built-in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation when the traffic is proxied. This helps protect your website from various forms of DDoS attacks.
• Web Application Firewall (WAF): With the Proxied setting, Cloudflare's WAF can inspect incoming traffic to block malicious traffic before it reaches your server.

2. Performance Improvements

• Content Delivery Network (CDN): Cloudflare caches your static content (like images, JavaScript, CSS) on servers located around the world. When users request these resources, they get them from a server geographically closer to them, reducing latency and improving load times.
• Load Balancing and Failover: Cloudflare can distribute traffic across multiple servers and provides failover options to redirect traffic to different servers if one goes down.

3. Obfuscation of Origin IP

• By proxying your traffic, Cloudflare hides your server's actual IP address. This makes it harder for attackers to target your origin server directly.

4. SSL/TLS Termination

• Flexible SSL: Traffic between the user and Cloudflare is encrypted, while traffic between Cloudflare and your origin server is unencrypted.
• Full SSL: Traffic between the user and Cloudflare, and traffic between Cloudflare and your origin server is encrypted, provided you have an SSL certificate on your origin server.

5. HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 Support

• Cloudflare’s edge servers support newer protocols like HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, which can significantly improve load times and latency for your users.

6. DNS and HTTP Traffic Management

• When DNS records are proxied, DNS queries will return Cloudflare IPs, not your origin server’s IPs. This enables Cloudflare to provide various optimization and security services before the request reaches your server.

Setting the Proxy Status

• Enabled (Proxied): Represented by an orange cloud icon next to the DNS record. This means the traffic routes through Cloudflare’s network.
• Disabled (DNS only): Represented by a gray cloud icon. DNS requests resolve to the origin server's IP address directly without passing through Cloudflare’s network.

Example Scenario:

Suppose you have an A record for www.example.com pointing to 203.0.113.1 and the Proxy Status is set to "Proxied":

• When a user visits www.example.com, DNS resolution will direct the user to a Cloudflare IP. Cloudflare's servers will then forward the request to your origin server at 203.0.113.1, applying security and performance benefits in the process.

Conclusion

Setting the "Proxy Status" to "Proxied" in Cloudflare’s DNS for your A and CNAME records means leveraging Cloudflare’s comprehensive suite of security, performance, and reliability features. This results in improved website security, faster content delivery, lower latency for users, and protection from direct attacks on your origin server.