Anyone with Plex Fronted by Cloudflare?

Essentially the same.

I have heard cloudflare does indeed cache smaller mp4 video files which is what might trigger their automation. Since you already created a page rule to cache nothing; that probably won’t cause any future problems.

Except it doesn’t seem like they’ll allow this zone back in (based on the whole, “you’ve done this twice already” wording).

I can always try some other one I guess.

I don’t think that’d actually help. CloudFlare’s response (from above) said:

Per our Cloudflare Terms we do not allow video streaming over Cloudflare

It says that don’t allow video streaming at all, not that they just don’t want it cached. If anything, having caching disabled will cause more video traffic over their network, as their edge nodes need to fetch the files from the origin every single time they’re accessed.

I don’t know a lot about Plex, but if you want to use Cloudflare then I feel like it’d be best to have just metadata proxied and cached via Cloudflare, whereas the videos themselves come directly from your origin server (or, a CDN that allows video streaming)

Yeah that’s not possible with Plex. The only reason for putting CF in front is to improve routes of the video streaming, there aren’t any other benefits.

I get why they took the action, everyone gaming the system and eating bandwidth. Probably part of a bigger crackdown because so many people have been doing this and the setup methods are widely publicized at this point.

Yup, it had to end at some point I guess. Bummer cause their server deployment helps a lot in some cases.

How about other services? I know Incapsula has a free tier plan.

//EDIT: No TLS on the free plan.

OVH has their free SSL Gateway too: HTTPS enabled for free - SSL Gateway - OVH

Although that’s not much of a CDN, have to pick between BHS and RBX(?) I think. But might help in some scenarios.

1 Like

is that any sort of cdn? It is advertised as ssl gateway with free ddos protection only. Don’t see how that will help at all unless he is prone to ddos without having native ddos protection.

Would route the traffic from origin through OVH, so it may help in some scenarios. For example, my connection is better to BHS than it is to Hetzner, so as long as Hetzner → BHS is pretty good, then it should be an improvement.

It is. Hetzner direct peers with OVH. That said, the SSL gateway is awful. I tried it at some point and it was super slow. I get much better performance cycling through 3 OVH VPS’s @ 100 Mbps.

What about BunnyCDN? Their high volume tier starts at $0.005 / GB ($5 / TB) which is quite cheap for a CDN, although it doesn’t have as many PoPs as their premium tier. CDN Pricing | Affordable Pay As You Go CDN | bunny.net

BunnyCDN is built for caching at a PoP close to end users, not route optimisation of uncacheable (is that a word?) traffic. Dejan does an amazing job with BunnyCDN, it’s just not built for this use case :slight_smile:

4 Likes

It does help with Album art though so it helps offload the origin some and it’s noticeable when browsing the libraries. I’m testing it right now and it’s working quite well. That said, I’d love to see route optimization from a pop close to the end user to a pop close to origin with better peering than regular public internet. That’d be sweet!

I’ve found the biggest bottleneck to cover art loading time is the drive the data is stored on. I have mine on an NVMe drive now, the difference is noticeable vs SSD. Obviously bandwidth is important too but if you’re running a Plex server you have that in abundance for simple image transfers.

3 Likes

I mean CloudFlare is very similar to how BunnyCDN works. I’m curious - Why would one be better than the other for this?

1 Like

Was assuming you’d enable Argo on Cloudflare while doing this otherwise it’s no different that having a VPS in the middle. After looking at the price of Argo my assumption was misguided.

Well the zone was re-enabled without me doing anything. Guess it auto enables. In any case, I’ve got my rule to bypass cache so we’ll see.

I re-read the response. Do you think it’ll make any difference if I enable stream on this account? It wouldn’t actually be used (since this wouldn’t be multi-bitrate video served from CF’s servers) but maybe they’ll lay off me if I pre-pay the $5?

if you got the money and want to chase after unicorns. go for it.