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Internal Data & Measurement Initiatives

3 posts · Oct 2025

What this trail covers

Cloudflare has a history of leveraging its scale for unique internal projects and data analysis. This began with ambitious, large-scale data collection and analysis efforts, such as the 'Internet Mince Pie Database' which, while seemingly whimsical, demonstrated the company's ability to mobilize resources for structured data gathering and review. This has evolved to more technically focused initiatives like optimizing data infrastructure for analytics, improving system-level operations, and developing frameworks for internet resilience and measurement. The research team actively publishes findings and collaborates with external bodies to advance internet transparency and resilience.

All Cloudflare trails
  1. The tricky science of Internet measurementThis post introduces the scientific practice of internet measurement, emphasizing its importance for understanding complex systems like the internet. It details the measurement lifecycle (data curation, modeling, validation) and discusses active vs. passive and direct vs. indirect measurement techniques with examples. A motivating example from Cloudflare illustrates the need for careful interpretation of data, highlighting the importance of context and avoiding erroneous conclusions. The post also defines key measurement vocabulary and jargon.
  2. Data at Cloudflare scale- some insights on measurement for 1,111 internsThis post details the challenges and insights gained from using Cloudflare's large-scale passive network data to detect internet censorship and middlebox interference. It highlights the difficulties of scale, noisy data (e.g., time resolution, DoS traffic, Happy Eyeballs), and lack of ground truth in passive observation. The author discusses the construction of IPTABLES rules for sampling TCP connections and the development of tampering signatures, emphasizing the limitations of passive observation in identifying the source of tampering and the scope of affected domains.
  3. Internet measurement, resilience, and transparency: blog takeover from Cloudflare Research and friendsThis post announces a week-long series of blog posts from Cloudflare Research and engineering teams focusing on internet measurement, resilience, and transparency. It highlights upcoming topics including foundational internet measurement concepts, Cloudflare Radar's evolution, internet speed test mechanics, a framework for internet resilience, post-quantum internet progress, Merkle Tree Certificates, characterization of network connections at scale, Linux networking stack optimizations, CGNAT detection, DDoS defense, and cache efficiency. It also previews discussions on cryptographic protocols for an agentic web, Web Bot Auth, and new protocols for secure agent interactions.