Tag Archives: Latin America

Announcing database integrations: a few clicks to connect to Neon, PlanetScale and Supabase on Workers

Post Syndicated from Shaun Persad original http://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-database-integrations/

Announcing database integrations: a few clicks to connect to Neon, PlanetScale and Supabase on Workers

Announcing database integrations: a few clicks to connect to Neon, PlanetScale and Supabase on Workers

One of the best feelings as a developer is seeing your idea come to life. You want to move fast and Cloudflare’s developer platform gives you the tools to take your applications from 0 to 100 within minutes.

One thing that we’ve heard slows developers down is the question: “What databases can be used with Workers?”. Developers stumble when it comes to things like finding the databases that Workers can connect to, the right library or driver that's compatible with Workers and translating boilerplate examples to something that can run on our developer platform.

Today we’re announcing Database Integrations  – making it seamless to connect to your database of choice on Workers. To start, we’ve added some of the most popular databases that support HTTP connections: Neon, PlanetScale and Supabase with more (like Prisma, Fauna, MongoDB Atlas) to come!

Focus more on code, less on config

Our serverless SQL database, D1, launched in open alpha last year, and we’re continuing to invest in making it production ready (stay tuned for an exciting update later this week!). We also recognize that there are plenty of flavours of databases, and we want developers to have the freedom to select what’s best for them and pair it with our powerful compute offering.

On our second day of this Developer Week 2023, data is in the spotlight. We’re taking huge strides in making it possible and more performant to connect to databases from Workers (spoiler alert!):

Making it possible and performant is just the start, we also want to make connecting to databases painless. Databases have specific protocols, drivers, APIs and vendor specific features that you need to understand in order to get up and running. With Database Integrations, we want to make this process foolproof.

Whether you’re working on your first project or your hundredth project, you should be able to connect to your database of choice with your eyes closed. With Database Integrations, you can spend less time focusing on configuration and more on doing what you love – building your applications!

What does this experience look like?

Discoverability

If you’re starting a project from scratch or want to connect Workers to an existing database, you want to know “What are my options?”.

Workers supports connections to a wide array of database providers over HTTP.  With newly released outbound TCP support, the databases that you can connect to on Workers will only grow!

In the new “Integrations” tab, you’ll be able to view all the databases that we support and add the integration to your Worker directly from here. To start, we have support for Neon, PlanetScale and Supabase with many more coming soon.

Announcing database integrations: a few clicks to connect to Neon, PlanetScale and Supabase on Workers

Authentication

You should never have to copy and paste your database credentials or other parts of the connection string.

Once you hit “Add Integration” we take you through an OAuth2 flow that automatically gets the right configuration from your database provider and adds them as encrypted environment variables to your Worker.

Announcing database integrations: a few clicks to connect to Neon, PlanetScale and Supabase on Workers

Once you have credentials set up, check out our documentation for examples on how to get started using the data platform’s client library. What’s more – we have templates coming that will allow you to get started even faster!

That’s it! With database integrations, you can connect your Worker with your database in just a few clicks. Head to your Worker > Settings > Integrations to try it out today.

What’s next?

We’ve only just scratched the surface with Database Integrations and there’s a ton more coming soon!

While we’ll be continuing to add support for more popular data platforms we also know that it's impossible for us to keep up in a moving landscape. We’ve been working on an integrations platform so that any database provider can easily build their own integration with Workers. As a developer, this means that you can start tinkering with the next new database right away on Workers.

Additionally, we’re working on adding wrangler support, so you can create integrations directly from the CLI. We’ll also be adding support for account level environment variables in order for you to share integrations across the Workers in your account.

We’re really excited about the potential here and to see all the new creations from our developers! Be sure to join Cloudflare’s Developer Discord and share your projects. Happy building!

The European Network Usage Fees proposal is about much more than a fight between Big Tech and Big European telcos

Post Syndicated from Petra Arts original http://blog.cloudflare.com/eu-network-usage-fees/

The European Network Usage Fees proposal is about much more than a fight between Big Tech and Big European telcos

The European Network Usage Fees proposal is about much more than a fight between Big Tech and Big European telcos

There’s an important debate happening in Europe that could affect the future of the Internet. The European Commission is considering new rules for how networks connect to each other on the Internet. It’s considering proposals that – no hyperbole – will slow the Internet for consumers and are dangerous for the Internet.

The large incumbent telcos are complaining loudly to anyone who wants to listen that they aren’t being adequately compensated for the capital investments they’re making. These telcos are a set of previously regulated monopolies who still constitute the largest telcos by revenue in Europe in today's competitive market. They say traffic volumes, largely due to video streaming, are growing rapidly, implying they need to make capital investments to keep up. And they call for new charges on big US tech companies: a “fair share” contribution that those networks should make to European Internet infrastructure investment.

In response to this campaign, in February the European Commission released a set of recommended actions and proposals “aimed to make Gigabit connectivity available to all citizens and businesses across the EU by 2030.” The Commission goes on to say that “Reliable, fast and secure connectivity is a must for everybody and everywhere in the Union, including in rural and remote areas.” While this goal is certainly the right one, our agreement with the European Commission’s approach, unfortunately, ends right there. A close reading of the Commission’s exploratory consultation that accompanies the Gigabit connectivity proposals shows that the ultimate goal is to intervene in the market for how networks interconnect, with the intention to extract fees from large tech companies and funnel them to large incumbent telcos.

This debate has been characterised as a fight between Big Tech and Big European Telco. But it’s about much more than that. Contrary to its intent, these proposals would give the biggest technology companies preferred access to the largest European ISPs. European consumers and small businesses, when accessing anything on the Internet outside Big Tech (Netflix, Google, Meta, Amazon, etc), would get the slow lane. Below we’ll explain why Cloudflare, although we are not currently targeted for extra fees, still feels strongly that these fees are dangerous for the Internet:

  • Network usage fees would create fast lanes for Big Tech content, and slow lanes for everything else, slowing the Internet for European consumers;
  • Small businesses, Internet startups, and consumers are the beneficiaries of Europe’s low wholesale bandwidth prices. Regulatory intervention in this market would lead to higher prices that would be passed onto SMEs and consumers;
  • The Internet works best – fastest and most reliably – when networks connect freely and frequently, bringing content and service as close to consumers as possible. Network usage fees artificially disincentivize efforts to bring content close to users, making the Internet experience worse for consumers.

Why network interconnection matters

Understanding why the debate in Europe matters for the future of the Internet requires understanding how Internet traffic gets to end users, as well as the steps that can be taken to improve Internet performance.

At Cloudflare, we know a lot about this. According to Hurricane Electric, Cloudflare connects with other networks at 287 Internet exchange points (IXPs), the second most of any network on the planet. And we’re directly connected to other networks on the Internet in more than 285 cities in over 100 countries. So when we see a proposal to change how networks interconnect, we take notice. What the European Commission is considering might appear to be targeting the direct relationship between telcos and large tech companies, but we know it will have much broader effects.

There are different ways in which networks exchange data on the Internet. In some cases, networks connect directly to exchange data between users of each network. This is called peering. Cloudflare has an open peering policy; we’ll peer with any other network. Peering is one hop between networks – it’s the gold standard. Fewer hops from start to end generally means faster and more reliable data delivery. We peer with more than 12,000 networks around the world on a settlement-free basis, which means neither network pays the other to send traffic. This settlement-free peering is one of the aspects of Cloudflare’s business that allows us to offer a free version of our services to millions of users globally, permitting individuals and small businesses to have websites that load quickly and efficiently and are better protected from cyberattacks. We’ll talk more about the benefits of settlement-free peering below.

The European Network Usage Fees proposal is about much more than a fight between Big Tech and Big European telcos
Figure 1: Traffic takes one of three paths between an end-user’s ISP and the content or service they are trying to access. Traffic could go over direct peering which is 1:1 between the ISP and the content or service provider; it could go through IX Peering which is a many:many connection between networks; or it could go via a transit provider, which is a network that gets compensated for delivering traffic anywhere on the Internet.

When networks don’t connect directly, they might pay a third-party IP transit network to deliver traffic on their behalf. No network is connected to every other network on the Internet, so transit networks play an important role making sure any network can reach any other network. They’re compensated for doing so; generally a network will pay their transit provider based on how much traffic they ask the transit provider to deliver. Cloudflare is connected to more than 12,000 other networks, but there are over 100,000 Autonomous Systems (networks) on the Internet, so we use transit networks to reach the “long tail”. For example, the Cloudflare network (AS 13335) provides the website cloudflare.com to any network that requests it. If a user of a small ISP with whom Cloudflare doesn’t have direct connections requests cloudflare.com from their browser, it’s likely that their ISP will use a transit provider to send that request to Cloudflare. Then Cloudflare would respond to the request, sending the website content back to the user via a transit provider.

In Europe, transit providers play a critical role because many of the largest incumbent telcos won’t do settlement-free direct peering connections. Therefore, many European consumers that use large incumbent telcos for their Internet service interact with Cloudflare’s services through third party transit networks. It isn’t the gold standard of network interconnection (which is peering, and would be faster and more reliable) but it works well enough most of the time.

Cloudflare would of course be happy to directly connect with EU telcos because we have an open peering policy. As we’ll show, the performance and reliability improvement for their subscribers and our customers’ content and services would significantly improve. And if the telcos offered us transit – the ability to send traffic to their network and onwards to the Internet – at market rates, we would consider use of that service as part of competitive supplier selection. While it’s unfortunate that incumbent telcos haven’t offered services at market-competitive prices, overall the interconnection market in Europe – indeed the Internet itself – currently works well. Others agree. BEREC, the body of European telecommunications regulators, wrote recently in a preliminary assessment:

BEREC's experience shows that the internet has proven its ability to cope with increasing traffic volumes, changes in demand patterns, technology, business models, as well as in the (relative) market power between market players. These developments are reflected in the IP interconnection mechanisms governing the internet which evolved without a need for regulatory intervention. The internet’s ability to self-adapt has been and still is essential for its success and its innovative capability.

There is a competitive market for IP transit. According to market analysis firm Telegeography’s State of the Network 2023 report, “The lowest [prices on offer for] 100 GigE [IP transit services in Europe] were $0.06 per Mbps per month.” These prices are consistent with what Cloudflare sees in the market. In our view, the Commission should be proud of the effective competition in this market, and it should protect it. These prices are comparable to IP transit prices in the United States and signal, overall, a healthy Internet ecosystem. Competitive wholesale bandwidth prices (transit prices) mean it is easier for small independent telcos to enter the market, and lower prices for all types of Internet applications and services. In our view, regulatory intervention in this well-functioning market has significant down-side risks.

Large incumbent telcos are seeking regulatory intervention in part because they are not willing to accept the fair market prices for transit. Very Large Telcos and Content and Application Providers (CAPs) – the term the European Commission uses for networks that have the content and services consumers want to see – negotiate freely for transit and peering. In our experience, large incumbent telcos ask for paid peering fees that are many multiples of what a CAP could pay to transit networks for a similar service. At the prices offered, many networks – including Cloudflare – continue to use transit providers instead of paying incumbent telcos for peering. Telcos are trying to use regulation to force CAPs into these relationships at artificially high prices.

If the Commission’s proposal is adopted, the price for interconnection in Europe would likely be set by this regulation, not the market. Once there’s a price for interconnection between CAPs and telcos, whether that price is found via negotiation, or more likely arbitrators set the price, that is likely to become the de facto price for all interconnection. After all, if telcos can achieve artificially high prices from the largest CAPs, why would they accept much lower rates from any other network – including transits – to connect with them? Instead of falling wholesale prices spurring Internet innovation as is happening now in Europe and the United States, rising wholesale prices will be passed onto small businesses and consumers.

Network usage fees would give Big Tech a fast lane, at the expense of consumers and smaller service providers

If network fees become a reality, the current Internet experience for users in Europe will deteriorate. Notwithstanding existing net neutrality regulations, we already see large telcos relegate content from transit providers to more congested connections. If the biggest CAPs pay for interconnection, consumer traffic to other networks will be relegated to a slow and/or congested lane. Networks that aren’t paying would still use transit providers to reach the large incumbent telcos, but those transit links would be second class citizens to the paid traffic. Existing transit links will become (more) slow and congested. By targeting only the largest CAPs, a proposal based on network fees would perversely, and contrary to intent, cement those CAPs’ position at the top by improving the consumer experience for those networks at the expense of all others. By mandating that the CAPs pay the large incumbent telcos for peering, the European Commission would therefore be facilitating discrimination against services using smaller networks and organisations that cannot match the resources of the large CAPs.

Indeed, we already see evidence that some of the large incumbent telcos treat transit networks as second-class citizens when it comes to Internet traffic. In November 2022, HWSW, a Hungarian tech news site, reported on recurring Internet problems for users of Magyar Telekom, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, because of congestion between Deutsche Telekom and its transit networks:

Network problem that exists during the fairly well-defined period, mostly between 4 p.m. and midnight Hungarian time, … due to congestion in the connection (Level3) between Deutsche Telekom, the parent company that operates Magyar Telekom's international peering routes, and Cloudflare, therefore it does not only affect Hungarian subscribers, but occurs to a greater or lesser extent at all DT subsidiaries that, like Magyar Telekom, are linked to the parent company. (translated by Google Translate)

Going back many years, large telcos have demonstrated that traffic reaching them through transit networks is not a high priority to maintain quality. In 2015, Cogent, a transit provider, sued Deutsche Telekom over interconnection, writing, “Deutsche Telekom has interfered with the free flow of internet traffic between Cogent customers and Deutsche Telekom customers by refusing to increase the capacity of the interconnection ports that allow the exchange of traffic”.

Beyond the effect on consumers, the implementation of Network Usage Fees would seem to violate the European Union’s Open Internet Regulation, sometimes referred to as the net neutrality provision. Article 3(3) of the Open Internet Regulation states:

Providers of internet access services shall treat all traffic equally, when providing internet access services, without discrimination, restriction or interference, and irrespective of the sender and receiver, the content accessed or distributed, the applications or services used or provided, or the terminal equipment used. (emphasis added)

Fees from certain sources of content in exchange for private paths between the CAP and large incumbent telcos would seem to be a plain-language violation of this provision.

Network usage fees would endanger the benefits of Settlement-Free Peering

Let’s now talk about the ecosystem that leads to a thriving Internet. We first talked about transit, now we’ll move on to peering, which is quietly central to how the Internet works. “Peering” is the practice of two networks directly interconnecting (they could be backbones, CDNs, mobile networks or broadband telcos to exchange traffic. Almost always, networks peer without any payments (“settlement-free”) in recognition of the performance benefits and resiliency we’re about to discuss. A recent survey of over 10,000 ISPs shows that 99.99% of their exchanged traffic is on settlement-free terms. The Internet works best when these peering arrangements happen freely and frequently.

These types of peering arrangements and network interconnection also significantly improve latency for the end-user of services delivered via the Internet. The speed of an Internet connection depends more on latency (the time it takes for a consumer to request data and receive the response) than on bandwidth (the maximum amount of data that is flowing at any one time over a connection). Latency is critical to many Internet use-cases. A recent technical paper used the example of a mapping application that responds to user scrolling. The application wouldn’t need to pre-load unnecessary data if it can quickly get a small amount of data in response to a user swiping in a certain direction.

In recognition of the myriad benefits, settlement-free peering between CDNs and terminating ISPs is the global norm in the industry. Most networks understand that through settlement-free peering, (1) customers get the best experience through local traffic delivery, (2) networks have increased resilience through multiple traffic paths, and (3) data is exchanged locally instead of backhauled and aggregated in larger volumes at regional Internet hubs. By contrast, paid peering is rare, and is usually employed by networks that operate in markets without robust competition. Unfortunately, when an incumbent telco achieves a dominant market position or has no significant competition, they may be less concerned about the performance penalty they impose on their own users by refusing to peer directly.

The European Network Usage Fees proposal is about much more than a fight between Big Tech and Big European telcos

As an example, consider the map in Figure 2. This map shows the situation in Germany, where most traffic is exchanged via transit providers at the Internet hub in Frankfurt. Consumers are losing in this situation for two reasons: First, the farther they are from Frankfurt, the higher latency they will experience for Cloudflare services. For customers in northeast Germany, for example, the distance from Cloudflare’s servers in Frankfurt means they will experience nearly double the latency of consumers closer to Cloudflare geographically. Second, the reliance on a small number of transit providers exposes their traffic to congestion and reliability risks. The remedy is obvious: if large telcos would interconnect (“peer”) with Cloudflare in all five cities where Cloudflare has points of presence, every consumer, regardless of where they are in Germany, would have the same excellent Internet experience.

We’ve shown that local settlement-free interconnection benefits consumers by improving the speed of their Internet experience, but local interconnection also reduces the amount of traffic that aggregates at regional Internet hubs. If a telco interconnects with a large video provider in a single regional hub, the telco needs to carry their subscribers’ request for content through their network to the hub. Data will be exchanged at the hub, then the telco needs to carry the data back through their “backbone” network to the subscriber. (While this situation can result in large traffic volumes, modern networks can easily expand the capacity between themselves at almost no cost by adding additional port capacity. The fibre-optic cable capacity in this “backbone” part of the Internet is not constrained.)

The European Network Usage Fees proposal is about much more than a fight between Big Tech and Big European telcos
Figure 3. A hypothetical example where a telco only interconnects with a video provider at a regional Internet hub, showing how traffic aggregates at the interconnection point.

Local settlement-free peering is one way to reduce the traffic across those interconnection points. Another way is to use embedded caches, which are offered by most CDNs, including Cloudflare. In this scenario, a CDN sends hardware to the telco, which installs it in their network at local aggregation points that are private to the telco. When their subscriber requests data from the CDN, the telco can find that content at a local infrastructure point and send it back to the subscriber. The data doesn’t need to aggregate on backhaul links, or ever reach a regional Internet hub. This approach is common. Cloudflare has hundreds of these deployments with telcos globally.

The European Network Usage Fees proposal is about much more than a fight between Big Tech and Big European telcos
Figure 4. A hypothetical example where a telco has deployed embedded caches from a video provider, removing the backhaul and aggregation of traffic across Internet exchange points

Conclusion: make your views known to the European Commission!

In conclusion, it’s our view that despite the unwillingness of many large European incumbents to peer on a settlement-free basis, the IP interconnection market is healthy, which benefits European consumers. We believe regulatory intervention that forces content and application providers into paid peering agreements would have the effect of relegating all other traffic to a slow, congested lane. Further, we fear this intervention will do nothing to meet Europe’s Digital Decade goals, and instead will make the Internet experience worse for consumers and small businesses.

There are many more companies, NGOs and politicians that have raised concerns about the impact of introducing network usage fees in Europe. A number of stakeholders have spoken out already about the dangers of regulating the Internet interconnection system; from digital rights groups to the Internet Society, European Video on Demand providers and commercial broadcasters, Internet Exchanges and mobile operators to several European governments and Members of the European Parliament.

If you agree that major intervention in how networks interconnect in Europe is unnecessary, and even harmful, consider reading more about the European Commission’s consultation. While the consultation itself may look intimidating, anyone can submit a narrative response (deadline: 19 May). Consider telling the European Commission that their goals of ubiquitous connectivity are the right ones but that the approach they are considering is going into the wrong direction.

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Post Syndicated from Nicholas Platais original http://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-is-faster-than-netskope-and-zscaler-across-latam/

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

This post is also available in Español and Português.

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Last CIO Week, we showed you how our network stacks up against competitors across several countries. We demonstrated with our tests that Cloudflare Access is 38% faster than ZScaler (ZPA) worldwide.

Today we wanted to focus on LATAM and show how our network performed against Zscaler and Netskope in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

With 47 data centers across Latin America and Caribbean, Cloudflare has the largest number of SASE Points of Presence across all vendors, meaning we can offer our Zero Trust services closer to the end user and reduce unwanted latency.

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

We’ve run a series of tests comparing our Zero Trust Network Access product against Zscaler and Netskope’s comparable products.

For each of these tests, we used 95th percentile Time to First Byte and Response tests, which measure the time it takes for a user to make a request, and get the start of the response (Time to First Byte), and the end of the response (Response). These tests were designed with the goal of trying to measure performance from an end-user perspective.

In this blog we’re going to talk about why performance matters and do a deep dive on what we’re measuring to show that we’re faster.

Why does performance matter?

Performance matters because it impacts your employees' experience and their ability to get their job done. For example, if Anna is connecting to a hosted, protected application like Salesforce to complete some work, she doesn’t want to be waiting constantly for pages to load or to authenticate her requests. In an access-controlled application, the first thing you do when you connect is you log in. If that login takes a long time, you may get distracted with a random message from a coworker and even when you get authenticated, you still want your normal application experience to be snappy and smooth: users should never notice Zero Trust when it’s at its best.

If these products or experiences are slow, then something worse might happen than your users complaining: they may find ways to turn off the products or bypass them, which puts your company at risk. A Zero Trust product suite is completely ineffective if no one is using it because it’s slow.

Ensuring Zero Trust is fast is critical to the effectiveness of a Zero Trust solution: employees won’t want to turn it off and put themselves at risk if they barely know it’s there at all. Services like Zscaler or Netskope may outperform many older, antiquated solutions, but their network still fails to measure up to a highly performant, optimized network like Cloudflare’s.

Cloudflare Access: the fastest Zero Trust proxy

Access control needs to be seamless and transparent to the user: the best compliment for a Zero Trust solution is employees barely notice it’s there. Services like Cloudflare Access and Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) allow users to cache authentication information on the provider network, ensuring applications can be accessed securely and quickly to give users that seamless experience they want. So having a network that minimizes the number of logins required while also reducing the latency of your application requests by delivering the service closer to the user will help keep your Internet experience snappy and reactive.

For these tests, Cloudflare contracted Miercom, a third party who performed a set of tests that was intended to replicate an end-user connecting to a resource protected by Cloudflare, Zscaler and Netskope. Miercom set up application instances in 14 locations around the world, and devised a test that would log into the application through various Zero Trust providers to access certain content. The test methodology is described as follows, but you can look at the full report from Miercom detailing their test methodology here:

  • User connects to the application from a browser mimicked by a Catchpoint instance – new session
  • User authenticates against their identity provider
  • User accesses resource
  • User refreshes the browser page and tries to access the same resource but with credentials already present – existing session

In this test we evaluated Cloudflare against Zscaler and Netskope accessing applications hosted in two specific regions (Brazil and the US south-west). We tested the response time for an existing session, when a user has already been authenticated and that authentication information can be cached.

Here’s how this data looks for each of the 10 countries we tested across LATAM:

Argentina

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in Brazil)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 1,203
Netskope 8,319
Zscaler 5,961

When we drill into the data, we see that Cloudflare is faster when connecting from Argentina to an app hosted in Brazil. Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 75% faster than Zscaler and 85% faster than Netskope.

Cloudflare is also faster when connecting from Argentina to an app hosted in the United States (South West Region). Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 70% faster than Zscaler and 68% faster than Netskope:

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in US West)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 1,587
Netskope 5,082
Zscaler 5,299

Brazil

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in Brazil)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 1,525
Netskope 3,799
Zscaler 3,916

When we drill into the data, we see that Cloudflare is faster when connecting from Brazil to an app hosted in Brazil. Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 61% faster than Zscaler and 59% faster than Netskope.

Cloudflare is also faster when connecting from Brazil to an app hosted in the United States (South West Region). Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 58% faster than Zscaler and 59% faster than Netskope:

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in US West)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 1,603
Netskope 3,989
Zscaler 3,894

Chile

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in Brazil)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 714
Netskope 3,000
Zscaler 3,157

When we drill into the data, we see that Cloudflare is faster when connecting from Chile to an app hosted in Brazil. Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 77% faster than Zscaler and 76% faster than Netskope.

Cloudflare is also faster when connecting from Chile to an app hosted in the United States (South West Region). Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 80% faster than Zscaler and 79% faster than Netskope:

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in US West)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 648
Netskope 3,113
Zscaler 3,290

Colombia

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in Brazil)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 1,628
Netskope 2,699
Zscaler 4,763

When we drill into the data, we see that Cloudflare is faster when connecting from Colombia to an app hosted in Brazil. Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 65% faster than Zscaler and 39% faster than Netskope.

Cloudflare is also faster when connecting from Colombia to an app hosted in the United States (South West Region). Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 59% faster than Zscaler and 56% faster than Netskope:

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in US West)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 1,466
Netskope 3,351
Zscaler 3,623

Costa Rica

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in Brazil)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 1,432
Netskope 2,036
Zscaler 2,110

When we drill into the data, we see that Cloudflare is faster when connecting from Costa Rica to an app hosted in Brazil. Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 32% faster than Zscaler and 29% faster than Netskope.

Cloudflare is also faster when connecting from Costa Rica to an app hosted in the United States (South West Region). Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 36% faster than Zscaler and 32% faster than Netskope:

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in US West)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 1,387
Netskope 2,044
Zscaler 2,191

Ecuador

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in Brazil)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 1,134
Netskope 2,002
Zscaler 2,206

When we drill into the data, we see that Cloudflare is faster when connecting from Ecuador to an app hosted in Brazil. Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 48% faster than Zscaler and 43% faster than Netskope.

Cloudflare is also faster when connecting from Ecuador to an app hosted in the United States (South West Region). Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 46% faster than Zscaler and 40% faster than Netskope:

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in US West)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 1,179
Netskope 1,976
Zscaler 2,210

Mexico

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in Brazil)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 2,334
Netskope 2,882
Zscaler 3,537

When we drill into the data, we see that Cloudflare is faster when connecting from Mexico to an app hosted in Brazil. Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 34% faster than Zscaler and 19% faster than Netskope.

Cloudflare is also faster when connecting from Mexico to an app hosted in the United States (South West Region). Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 56% faster than Zscaler and 53% faster than Netskope:

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in US West)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 1,249
Netskope 2,679
Zscaler 2,880

Peru

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in Brazil)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 609
Netskope 2,425
Zscaler 2,992

When we drill into the data, we see that Cloudflare is faster when connecting from Peru to an app hosted in Brazil. Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 79% faster than Zscaler and 74% faster than Netskope.

Cloudflare is also faster when connecting from Peru to an app hosted in the United States (South West Region). Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 80% faster than Zscaler and 73% faster than Netskope:

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in US West)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 827
Netskope 3,108
Zscaler 4,189

Uruguay

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in Brazil)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 1,242
Netskope 3,556
Zscaler 4,467

When we drill into the data, we see that Cloudflare is faster when connecting from Uruguay to an app hosted in Brazil. Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 72% faster than Zscaler and 65% faster than Netskope.

Cloudflare is also faster when connecting from Uruguay to an app hosted in the United States (South West Region). Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 60% faster than Zscaler and 48% faster than Netskope:

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in US West)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 1078
Netskope 2,101
Zscaler 2,726

Venezuela

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in Brazil)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 1,272
Netskope 3,451
Zscaler 3,800

When we drill into the data, we see that Cloudflare is faster when connecting from Venezuela to an app hosted in Brazil. Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 66% faster than Zscaler and 63% faster than Netskope.

Cloudflare is also faster when connecting from Venezuela to an app hosted in the United States (South West Region). Cloudflare’s 95th percentile time to first byte times are 85% faster than Zscaler and 77% faster than Netskope:

Cloudflare is faster than Netskope and Zscaler across LATAM

Zero Trust Access – Time to First Byte (App in US West)
95th Percentile (ms)
Cloudflare 685
Netskope 2,984
Zscaler 4,627

Why I joined Cloudflare in Latin America

Post Syndicated from Carlos Torales original https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-i-joined-cloudflare-in-latin-america/

Why I joined Cloudflare in Latin America

This post is also available in Español, Português.

Why I joined Cloudflare in Latin America

I am excited to announce that I recently joined Cloudflare as Vice President and Managing Director for Latin America. As many of you reading this likely already know, Cloudflare is on a mission to help build a better Internet. And that’s a big part as to why I joined this team — to contribute to this in Latin America specifically and interconnect all across the world. Cloudflare has had a strong presence in Latin America for years. First investing in the region back in 2014, when it expanded its network into Latin America to be closest to the users here — to provide even faster and reliable connections without compromising security. Over the past couple of years, our reliance on the Internet has increased, and Latin America is the fourth largest region in terms of online users globally. You can see how this makes Cloudflare’s mission even more important and presents a significant opportunity in Latin America.

A little about me

Being in the IT industry for two decades, this has shown me the profound impact of technology on everyone’s lives. Working within technology for years and seeing the industry evolve, with other companies that have been part of fueling my desire to deliver impactful results, I have already seen the impact Cloudflare has had at a massive scale, including in Latin America. Our further commitment to what’s to come in the region excites me. Not only in the business world with digital transitions, but also in promoting a better Latin America through the power of a more secure, performant, and reliable Internet!

Prior to joining Cloudflare, I was director of the Small Business and Commercial Segments for Cisco Latin America, where I directed an international team, leading sales and the business development efforts by digitizing the operational processes, sales cycle, and go-to-market strategy to drive scale within the SMB market. During my career I also have had the privilege to manage Segments Sales (Enterprise, Public Sector), Product Sales Specialists Teams, and business unit organizations in Security, Collaboration, Data Center, and Enterprise Networking.

Why I joined Cloudflare in Latin America

Why Cloudflare

My personal mission has always been expanding into new markets, building new organizations, and developing talent to drive incremental growth to gain market share — and more importantly, to deliver value to customers. I actually started my career working for Lucent Technologies’ Bell Labs mostly building new products and helping propel innovation. That was the first time I learned the power of technology, and its impact not just in business but in transforming lives.

Today, we are living in a very digital world, where all companies, industries, and countries are being transformed by the power of technology. At Cloudflare, I see a great opportunity to make a big impact, and in supporting Latin American countries. By taking advantage of this digital transformation, organizations of all sizes in the region can become even more productive with the technologies that are now available for industries and businesses of all types! Again, Cloudflare’s mission, to help build a better Internet, is key to why I decided to join. It all circles back to this. The inspiration and energy behind this mission is something you see in the entire team here from the get go. I have certainly seen this reflected in the work Cloudflare has already done in Latin America, but there’s a lot more we’re looking forward to. We are in a unique position to deliver significant value to customers and to millions of people in Latin America and beyond.

Growth opportunities in Latin America

It’s often been said that Latin America has been slow to adopt digital models, compared to the United States, Europe, and some countries in Asia. The shift to the cloud has just begun. Businesses are starting to move from on-premise technologies to the cloud, and many organizations are leveraging a multi-cloud environment as the platform to help propel them.

Cloudflare is in an unparalleled position to help transform the way Latin American companies do business and make that shift. We have seen this, in helping power many organizations in the region already, from customers like El Universal, to financial services like Bidu, Bitso, and Naranja, as well as retailers like Facily, and Falabella. This includes thousands of other Latin American customers of all sizes and types. We are also in partnership with a number of organizations to extend our services even further in the region, through Alestra, Cipher, NeoSecure, SYNNEX, TIVIT, and more.

By providing security, enhancing the performance of business-critical applications, and eliminating the cost and complexity of managing individual hardware — there are no tradeoffs for organizations, with this all within Cloudflare’s global cloud infrastructure and services. To give a sense of impact in the region, on average we block nearly seven billion cyber attacks every single day in Latin America. That’s something we’re very proud of especially as we see these threats developing.

When it comes to speed and reliability, with Cloudflare’s direct connections to more service and cloud providers, our network can reach 95% of the world’s population within 50 milliseconds (the blink of an eye is 300-400 milliseconds!). Cloudflare’s network is one of the most interconnected and also the largest networks in the world — already spanning more than 270 cities globally and this includes about 40 in Latin America. Being closest in proximity to Latin American users and organizations enables even more speed and reliable connections not only within Latin America, but also in and out of the region to anywhere else in the world.

I am very much looking forward to making an impact first hand to even more customers, partners, and users in Latin America.

Through the power of technology and innovation, let’s accelerate Latin America’s digital transformation! Let’s contribute to having a faster, more secure, and more reliable Internet in the region. I know a better Internet can be key to transforming Latin America and igniting productivity.

If you are interested in partnering with us, or would like to explore how we can help ensure your organization’s Internet properties are secure, fast, and reliable — reach out to me, [email protected] anytime. Also, we are hiring, and I’m helping grow our team! If you are interested in embarking on an ambitious mission to help build a better Internet, check out our open roles.