How Automatic Return Routing solves IP overlap
Mar 5, 2026Steve Welham, Lauren Joplin, Jackson Kruger, Thea Heinen
Summary
Introduces Automatic Return Routing (ARR) as a closed beta feature for Cloudflare One customers. ARR solves the problem of IP address overlap in enterprise networks (mergers, extranets, cookie-cutter architectures) by using stateful tracking instead of traditional routing tables. It remembers the originating tunnel for each network flow, allowing return traffic to be sent back to the correct source without ambiguity. ARR is built on the new Unified Routing framework, which consolidates network-layer and user-space routing logic for improved performance and interoperability.
More from the Internal Service Exposure & Management with Spectrum trail
- Route public traffic to private applications with Cloudflare
- Secure private networking for everyone: users, nodes, agents, Workers — introducing Cloudflare Mesh
- A QUICker SASE client: re-building Proxy Mode
- How Workers VPC Services connects to your regional private networks from anywhere in the world
- So long, and thanks for all the fish- how to escape the Linux networking stack