500 Tbps of capacity: 16 years of scaling our global network

This post details Cloudflare's network growth to 500 Tbps of external capacity across 330+ cities. It describes the evolution from early transit and peering relationships to a distributed security layer. Key technical contributions include: the architecture of the DDoS mitigation system using eBPF (_xdpd, _l4drop, _dosd) and Quicksilver for global rule propagation; the integration of edge computing (Workers, Containers) on the same infrastructure that handles DDoS; and the ongoing adoption and promotion of forward-looking protocols like RPKI and ASPA for BGP security. It also discusses the engineering challenges of distinguishing AI traffic from human traffic using TLS fingerprinting and behavioral analysis.