What Is Cloudflare and Why Do So Many Websites Go Down With It?

Cloudflare is one of the most important pieces of modern Internet infrastructure. Millions of websites – from tiny blogs to huge platforms – rely on it every day for speed, security, and stability.

What exactly is Cloudflare?

Cloudflare is a combination of a Reverse Proxy and a CDN (Content Delivery Network). It stands between visitors and the website’s real server.

In practice, Cloudflare helps websites by:

• Hiding the real server IP: attackers cannot easily find where the origin server is physically hosted.
• Filtering traffic and blocking attacks: Cloudflare’s firewall can stop many types of malicious requests and DDoS attacks before they hit the origin.
• Caching content worldwide: static files like images, scripts, and sometimes videos are stored on Cloudflare’s servers around the globe, so users get content from a nearby location.
• Reducing load and bandwidth on the origin server: fewer direct hits to the real server mean lower hosting costs and better performance.

Why do so many websites use Cloudflare?

There are three main reasons Cloudflare is so widely adopted:

• Security: strong firewall rules, bot protection, and DDoS mitigation built in.
• Speed: global CDN nodes help websites load faster for users everywhere.
• Cost: many powerful features are available on free or low-cost plans.

Because of this, everything from streaming sites, storefronts, and SaaS platforms to small blogs and portfolios can end up depending on Cloudflare as their main “front door” to the Internet.

What happens when Cloudflare has a problem?

To understand the impact, it helps to picture the request flow:

Because Cloudflare is in the middle, if its systems fail or misbehave, requests never reach the real server behind it. From the user’s perspective, it looks like the website itself is “down”, even though the origin server might still be running normally.

Why do so many websites “go down together”?

When a huge number of websites all use the same “front gate”, any major issue at that gate will affect them all at once. This can include:

• Websites not loading at all
• APIs returning errors or timing out
• Apps and services that depend on those APIs failing
• Login, payment, or media streaming features breaking temporarily

Can site owners bypass Cloudflare in an emergency?

In a critical situation, website owners have one main option:

However, this comes with several risks:

• No more DDoS protection — the origin server is exposed directly to the Internet.
• The real IP address becomes visible — making targeted attacks easier.
• The origin may overload — especially if traffic is high and there is no caching layer.

Because of these trade-offs, many site owners prefer to wait for Cloudflare to stabilize rather than fully bypassing it, unless the service is absolutely mission-critical.

In summary

Cloudflare is both a shield and a booster for a huge portion of the Internet. By hiding origin servers, filtering bad traffic, and caching content worldwide, it makes running a fast and secure website much easier and more affordable.

The downside of this convenience is dependency: when the middle layer has trouble, many websites and applications feel the impact at the same time. Understanding how Cloudflare works helps explain why so many sites can “go down together” — and why it is such a critical part of today’s web.