We recently started testing with CloudFlare and we like what we see so far. CloudFlare provides CDN services and operate differently than most of the other CDNs we have tested.
With CloudFlare you move your DNS entries to their servers and they they manage your DNS. They then point your DNS entries to their network and if they have the information on their servers they it is sent to the client if not they check your server for the information.
Plans and Prices
Free Plan -- Globally load balanced CDN, Static Content Caching, Anycast DNS, threat detection, Analytics updated every 24 hours, email support
PRO Plan ($20/month) -- everything in Free Plus Image Optimization, Resource Pre-loading, Mobile Optimization, SPDY Support, SSL Support, Analytics updated every 15 minutes
Business Plan ($200/month) -- everything in Free, Pro plus RailGun, Mod_security rule, Advanced DDoS, Custom DNS name servers, priority Email Support
Enterprise Plan ($3000/month) -- Everything in the Business Plan plus Better SLA and Phone Support
If you do not need Advanced Security and Priority Email support the winning combo may be a business plan at a Optimized Hosting Company
Questions for CloudFlare
1. What exactly does the Joomla Module / Plugin do? Does it help with performance or just help keep the log files cleaner by passing on the source IP address?
Restores original visitor IP at the Joomla application level & that's pretty much it.
Really the same thing.
While stats on our end will take 24 hours from the time of the actual nameserver switch, you should see a pretty immediate reduction in server load.
No conflict there using another CND with CloudFlare...but you might find it to be redundant having both.
Not at all.
Rocket Loader is a beta feature that does have the potential to break the JS. Other than that, you shouldn't see any issues.
We actually haven't pushed RG out to our hosts yet (still making tweaks). RG is going to be active at the hosting partner, so you really shouldn't worry about having to activate it once we push it out.
