I’m a customer using Argo, but I have to admit it’s not entirely visible to me how big the benefits are that I’m getting. I’m sure it’s great but.. just how much? Some visualizations would be nice.

Additionally, we have found the Argo tunnel to be relatively unreliable. Once every few months it seems there is an issue with one of the PoPs, and it takes a long time before our tunnels reconnect (several hours even); which imho is fairly inexcusable for something as critical as this. As such we’ve had to migrate away from using the tunnel, leaving me with earlier mentioned questions on the value we’re getting.

Analytics (including some cool visualizations) are available in the Traffic Analytics section of the dashboard. There is always more we can do — drop me a note at [email protected] if there are specific additional things you'd like to see.

Re: tunnel reliability, sorry to hear you've had a poor experience. We've been working hard on hardening things like tunnel reconnection and would love for you to give tunnels another shot.

What's the current maturity of Argo tunnel, though? I'm getting the feeling it's still in beta, is this correct?

Hey, will send you an e-mail myself if you don't mind about the first part of analytics. Community MVP here :)

Is Argo in same category as Google's GlobalLoadBalancer and AWS' GlobalAccelerator? If not, what are the differences?

Can Argo be enabled at network layer, say VPN, and for other protocols say VoIP and not just HTTP/S?

Does Argo take inspiration from published research? If so, which ones?

Thanks.

There are similarities between Argo and the Google/Amazon products you mention (as well as Azure's Front Door). All are aiming to solve similar problems inherent to routing on the Internet.

Re: enabling Argo at the network layer, watch this space :) I'd love to hear more about what you'd like to do such a product — email me! [email protected]

Looking at how Argo is presented (from the blog post), it seems like you've got a really strong use case for SDN, if you're not already using that already. As far as I can tell, dynamically updating routes across an internal network is one of the best non-internal-to-data-center uses of SDN - can you expand a little more on this, if you do use it, or on why you don't, if I'm completely off base?

Cheers, argo seems like an interesting project.

Yes, Argo is very "SDN" under the covers :)

The data plane runs on our x86 fleet and its control plane is driven by custom route computation and propagation systems (discussed a little more in the post). We're excited to talk more about the technical underpinnings of Argo in the future.

>Yes, Argo is very "SDN" under the covers :)

Ha I was reading the post again thinking about how you all did this, and it boiled down to OpenFlow/OVS/SDN magic, or you REALLY went all in on Cisco offerings.

>We're excited to talk more about the technical underpinnings of Argo in the future.

Looking foward to this update, thanks for the response!

You should consider to remake those graphs comparing the jitters. The non-backbone graph shows a majority of data points are below 0, which is impossible, so that means there are a small long tail at the high >20ms band, and you intentionally cropped them out. So when you said "oh the backbone graph is much better!". No it is not, it is very confusing actually.

I think that is showing the different from the average, so the variance in the jitter. It's not the actual latency which is not actually revealed with the Backbone in place.

Is Argo open sourced? If not, will it be open sourced in the future?

Rustam can weigh in here, but I'm not exactly sure what with Argo we'd open source. Argo is a collection of a bunch of different technologies that we use to measure the performance across our transit, peering, and backbone connections. We then send different requests down different paths depending on each customer's particular needs and settings. While I'd imagine we will open source parts of the overall system, there's not really a stand-alone package that we could make available for anyone else to use.

If there's a particular part of the overall Argo that would be helpful for you or others, let us know and we'll certainly consider it. Here's a list of things we've built at Cloudflare and open sourced already: https://cloudflare.github.io/

Frequent user of argo/argo tunnel checking in. As far as I know, the network/lower level parts are not yet in the open, but the tunnel bits are:

- Tunnel (cloudflared): https://github.com/cloudflare/cloudflared

- Argo as ingress (k8s): https://github.com/cloudflare/cloudflare-ingress-controller/

Can I use Argo as a localtunnel alternative in development?

Yes you can. You can run an Argo Tunnel without a Cloudflare account using the feature below. It's like ngrok, but with Argo Smart Routing.

https://developers.cloudflare.com/argo-tunnel/trycloudflare/

Is the official motto: Argo FUrself? ;)

Why does any of this matter, even in the slightest, when talking about "Argo and the Cloudflare Global Private Backbone" which is what this post is about.

Not everyone needs to have a web page, nor does an employee of a company have to use their services (especially if they spun up their domain, website, whathaveyou before working for the company) for any sort of personal project.

> Why does any of this matter, even in the slightest, when talking about "Argo and the Cloudflare Global Private Backbone" which is what this post is about.

So I need to explain to someone who doesn't think that it matters that it matters to me?

The fact that a post is about something else has never prevented people who take the time to comment on HN (an unpaid endeavor) from voicing an opinion on something related or ironic in some way.

> nor does an employee of a company have to use their services (especially if they spun up their domain, website, whathaveyou before working for the company) for any sort of personal project.

You are right it is not codified into some law. But as a general rule it makes more practical sense for an employee to use the employers products especially if they are posting a comment on a blog about another service that the employer offers where it's easy to see (such as I did) that they are not using the employers free primarily product that they are known for.

Why should the employer not expect that their employees use their free product (which jgrahamc does use of course for his personal domain JGC.ORG ..).

Because your use case might be different than what your company targets? I see no problem with that, heck, if the person used cloudflare and only cloudflare, I would probably question if they are making proper desicions of benefits of diffirent products, and if they are drinking company kool-aid.

I would rather read content generated by someone who is able to compare and contrast various technologies in an objective fashion, instead of a yes man.

Rustam does whatever he likes with his own domain(s). I do use Cloudflare for jgc.org but not for every domain that I own. Shrug.

There is no "general rule"; stop trying to make it seem like there is.

Additionally, many companies learned the hard way that forcing an employee to use your products or services over those they want to use will do nothing but lower morale and cause frustration. Let people use what they want and already are using and they'll be much happier because they don't feel stifled by their employer. That's why most companies have a BYOD policy for things like phones, because nobody wants to switch if they don't have to.

Finally, it's frankly none of your business what products a person, any person chooses to use for their own personal projects. That's their decision to make, not yours, and they don't have to justify it to anyone but themselves.

Meh. I'm not the guy you're replying to, and I think he is introducing a bit of an 'issue' where there really isn't one. However, I think it brings up an interesting topic/observation about Cloudflare.

There certainly is a stigma in many companies that employees should use their employers products. I used to do work at some major beverage manufacturers, and for example, carrying a can of Coke into a Pepsi office will literally have you escorted out of the building. For lunch, Pepsi employees are heavily discouraged from eating at places that serve Dr Pepper or Coke products. Company money absolutely cannot be spent on buying catering/services from caterers that don't have Pepsi, etc. For airlines, I have a friend that works at United and he has said multiple times about how he hopes his colleagues never find out that he flies American sometimes because it's cheaper when flying to his hometown.

More recently and relatable to this forum, there was a post a week or two ago where a GitLab employee got lambasted by the CEO for using Github for his personal projects rather than GL.

If anything, I think this is an interesting observation that Cloudflare might have 'less of a stick up its butt' in terms of policing what its employees do. Is this thread the right place for that discussion? Idk, but it's an interesting discussion nonetheless.

The only reason I can see for wanting an employee to have a site on Cloudflare is so that they get personal experience of using Cloudflare _as a user_. That's very valuable and the primary reason I have jgc.org on Cloudflare: so I get to try every new Cloudflare product.

I actually pay for Cloudflare out of my own pocket like a normal user so I see every wart and new product etc.

You feel that way because it does not move the needle for someone to use your own product on such a small scale. Now let's say that same employee was socializing or coming in contact in some way with a decision maker for a potential large customer (or a current large customer). In that case you wouldn't feel the same way. And if you did feel the same way that wouldn't make much business sense because you know business and making a profit is important to most companies or should be. So sure it's easy to take that attitude because you think it doesn't matter (in this case) or because you aren't considering the very general sense of what it might mean to others.

It's is well known that companies go to great lengths for various reasons to encourage their employees to not only use their own products but to discount those products for an employee. As far as you paying for Cloudflare so you can see the end to end experience that's fine and that makes sense. However Cloudflare should consider reimbursing the nominal amount that you are paying. Further they should consider (Apple and Adobe did this as well as auto manufacturers) giving discounts to 'friends and family' because it's a decent source of feedback on the product. You know what else it does? It encourages friends and family to support the person continuing working for the company (because it's in their best interest because they get a benefit). I know of someone personally whose brother is high up at a well know auto manufacturer and the brother gets a car literally at no cost just to be an ambassador and encourage other sales at that company (and it works I have looked into buying the car as a result as have others).

Also noting that Cloudflare is an internet company for which the competitive landscape and ability to have losses is vastly different than an airline or a beverage manufacturer. There is a reason that old school companies are like that. And to think it's wrong in some way does not consider the situation that they are dealing with trying to keep market share in a business with very thin margins.

No the 'general rule' is that in certain situations you do something not to appear to be disrespectful in some way. So for example if you were to work at Ycombinator the 'general rule' would be to try and encourage others to use yc instead of someone who competes with YC. Ditto if you work for a department store it would be typical to be supportive in some way for your employer (who gives you a job) and not if you can afford to shop at one of their competitors. For some reason this has been lost in the new economy.