6 ms·

Cubans would benefit from infrastructure in Cuba.

by CompuHacker 10y ago

chillydawg 10y ago
But cloudflare would not.
- walrus01 10y ago
  Sure they would, given a significant percentage of cubans that might have internet access at home or on their phones in the future, US-based spanish language media/websites are good potential paying customers for cloudflare.
Alupis 10y ago
Cubans would benefit from having access to the internet... Cloudflare doesn't provide any of that, nor is a PoP required in Cuba for Cubans to browse websites (even those running behind Cloudflare). Nor will Cubans benefit from a data center being built in Cuba, since majority of said data center's clients will be internationals (not businesses nor people in Cuba). It does seem like a Cloudflare PoP in Cuba is merely for the novelty.
- Graphon1 10y ago
  It seems shortsighted to say "Cubans won't benefit" because international people will benefit first. If more international people go to Cuba, whether for tourism or to invest in businesses, or start businesses, isn't there a benefit to the Cuban people? And eventually it becomes less expensive, and within reach for everyone. In the US the benefits of the connected network initially reached only the US DoD and its partners. Then university communities. Then early tech companies. Then everyone.
  - Alupis 10y ago
    > And eventually it becomes less expensive, and within reach for everyone Yes, but as a paying Cloudflare customer, I'd much rather Cloudflare spend their/my money tangibly improving their service, not propping up a small nation's economy in some sort of idealistic hope that better things will follow. From my understanding, and from the article's description, most Cubans simply don't have easy access to the internet, or in some cases, no access at all. So putting in data centers which will primarily service foreign corporations seems very imperialistic as well as opportunistic (cheap land, cheap labor, etc). They need last-mile carriers more than anything, and even though ISP's generally terminate at a data center, there's a whole lot that must happen first before Cubans will feel any benefits. So, Cloudflare adding a PoP in Cuba by 2017 seems to have zero benefits, for anyone really. Even after Cloudflare does setup a PoP, the benefits to Cubans are minimal-to-none. Perhaps if Cloudflare is simply itching to burn extra money, they could instead consider lowering the price of their business tier - making it immediately more accessible for more companies. This brings SSL to more sites, protects them from attacks, and can in some cases dramatically improve performance. Those a tangible benefits for the entire internet.
    - skybrian 10y ago
      I haven't used Cloudflare, but aren't you paying to make your website globally available? Good access from Cuba is one small part of that. Maybe not the part you care about, but other people might - that's what happens with bundling.
      - Alupis 10y ago
        > aren't you paying to make your website globally available? No, any website (unless blocked by a nation-state) is by default accessible globally. Yes, Cloudflare's CDN offers increased performance for global visitors, but with so few people online in Cuba, there's very little sense in fronting the cost of building all this infrastructure just to have a Cloudflare PoP there. There's many other nations much larger and better connected that CloudFlare does not have a PoP in, so why pick Cuba? Cubans have bigger concerns than getting a page to load a few milliseconds faster. Getting online in the first place might be a bigger concern for starters...
        skybrian 10y ago
        You pay a CDN to get better performance (globally) than you would get by default. It's up to the provider to decide what "better performance" means and build more infrastructure to support that. As a customer, I don't see why you think you have the right to nit-pick about how they go about this or where global reach needs to be improved (which new endpoints to open). You pay your money and they decide which countries to spend it on.
        Alupis 10y ago
        > As a customer, I don't see why you think you have the right to nit-pick about how they go about this or where global reach needs to be improved This was a public discussion, and therefore I have every right to "chime in". As a paying customer, I have even more of a right to "chime in", as Cloudflare decisions may impact my business. Putting a PoP in Cuba because "bleeding hearts from decades of terrible government policy" isn't a sound business decision. Nobody has offered any better explanation of advantages other than the novelty, and frankly, if that's the core reason... that's a bad decision and a blatant waste of money.

Cubans would benefit from infrastructure in Cuba.

chillydawg 10y ago

But cloudflare would not.

walrus01 10y ago
Sure they would, given a significant percentage of cubans that might have internet access at home or on their phones in the future, US-based spanish language media/websites are good potential paying customers for cloudflare.

Alupis 10y ago

Cubans would benefit from having access to the internet... Cloudflare doesn't provide any of that, nor is a PoP required in Cuba for Cubans to browse websites (even those running behind Cloudflare). Nor will Cubans benefit from a data center being built in Cuba, since majority of said data center's clients will be internationals (not businesses nor people in Cuba). It does seem like a Cloudflare PoP in Cuba is merely for the novelty.

Graphon1 10y ago
It seems shortsighted to say "Cubans won't benefit" because international people will benefit first. If more international people go to Cuba, whether for tourism or to invest in businesses, or start businesses, isn't there a benefit to the Cuban people? And eventually it becomes less expensive, and within reach for everyone. In the US the benefits of the connected network initially reached only the US DoD and its partners. Then university communities. Then early tech companies. Then everyone.
- Alupis 10y ago
  > And eventually it becomes less expensive, and within reach for everyone Yes, but as a paying Cloudflare customer, I'd much rather Cloudflare spend their/my money tangibly improving their service, not propping up a small nation's economy in some sort of idealistic hope that better things will follow. From my understanding, and from the article's description, most Cubans simply don't have easy access to the internet, or in some cases, no access at all. So putting in data centers which will primarily service foreign corporations seems very imperialistic as well as opportunistic (cheap land, cheap labor, etc). They need last-mile carriers more than anything, and even though ISP's generally terminate at a data center, there's a whole lot that must happen first before Cubans will feel any benefits. So, Cloudflare adding a PoP in Cuba by 2017 seems to have zero benefits, for anyone really. Even after Cloudflare does setup a PoP, the benefits to Cubans are minimal-to-none. Perhaps if Cloudflare is simply itching to burn extra money, they could instead consider lowering the price of their business tier - making it immediately more accessible for more companies. This brings SSL to more sites, protects them from attacks, and can in some cases dramatically improve performance. Those a tangible benefits for the entire internet.
  - skybrian 10y ago
    I haven't used Cloudflare, but aren't you paying to make your website globally available? Good access from Cuba is one small part of that. Maybe not the part you care about, but other people might - that's what happens with bundling.
    - Alupis 10y ago
      > aren't you paying to make your website globally available? No, any website (unless blocked by a nation-state) is by default accessible globally. Yes, Cloudflare's CDN offers increased performance for global visitors, but with so few people online in Cuba, there's very little sense in fronting the cost of building all this infrastructure just to have a Cloudflare PoP there. There's many other nations much larger and better connected that CloudFlare does not have a PoP in, so why pick Cuba? Cubans have bigger concerns than getting a page to load a few milliseconds faster. Getting online in the first place might be a bigger concern for starters...
      - skybrian 10y ago
        You pay a CDN to get better performance (globally) than you would get by default. It's up to the provider to decide what "better performance" means and build more infrastructure to support that. As a customer, I don't see why you think you have the right to nit-pick about how they go about this or where global reach needs to be improved (which new endpoints to open). You pay your money and they decide which countries to spend it on.
        Alupis 10y ago
        > As a customer, I don't see why you think you have the right to nit-pick about how they go about this or where global reach needs to be improved This was a public discussion, and therefore I have every right to "chime in". As a paying customer, I have even more of a right to "chime in", as Cloudflare decisions may impact my business. Putting a PoP in Cuba because "bleeding hearts from decades of terrible government policy" isn't a sound business decision. Nobody has offered any better explanation of advantages other than the novelty, and frankly, if that's the core reason... that's a bad decision and a blatant waste of money.