Cloudflare is driving me crazy

[Tess Sluijter]

Is anyone else being gatekept on CIN, by an overly protective Cloudflare?!

Every single pageload I do, that Cloudflare page pops up to "check the security of your connection.".

Every other "like" I want to click, runs into an "oops we ran into some problems".

It's rendered CIN next-to unusable for me.

EDIT: Ha! Posting this thread, again: "Oops, we ran into some problems."

 

[Rick Butler]

Well, I guess start with the simple things -
1) Does the problem replicate between networks? Mobile?
2) Does the problem move between browsers?
3) Any VPN's to speak of? Perhaps try one and route traffic through a different country?

I'm sure you know all this, and perhaps it's an issue with a CDN somewhere.

I, myself, have no issues with CIN or Cloudflare. I access via multiple networks, mobile, and with VPNs. All good. I know that doesn't help you much, but if you're looking for "other user perspective", well, I'm 5 by 5 here.

/r

 

[jlyon]

Might check your WAF settings and or add CIN to whitelist

 

[Tess Sluijter]

Hey Rick, yes the issue is:
* cross browser
* cross device
* cross network.

I have tried both Safari and Edge on MacOS laptops. Both on home and work networks. And I've tried on my phone, on mobile.

In all cases, CIN's Cloudflare protection barges in on every single page load and even blocks the loading of your avatars.

Hey Jlyon, a WAF is for inbound traffic towards CIN; it's not something that runs on my device or network. The problem is with me browsing CIN, not with others using my websites. Now, I did turn down my tracking protection etc...but even then it doesn't get me in. I've literally been trying 15 minutes to get this reply posted. :|

EDIT: My browser console's throwing quite a few warnings about racking, plus a whole bunch of wacky Javascript errors. Server's rejecting everything with HTTP429.

 

[Rick Butler]

Hey Rick, yes the issue is:
* cross browser
* cross device
* cross network.

I have tried both Safari and Edge on MacOS laptops. Both on home and work networks. And I've tried on my phone, on mobile.

In all cases, CIN's Cloudflare protection barges in on every single page load and even blocks the loading of your avatars.

Hey Jlyon, a WAF is for inbound traffic towards CIN; it's not something that runs on my device or network. The problem is with me browsing CIN, not with others using my websites. Now, I did turn down my tracking protection etc...but even then it doesn't get me in. I've literally been trying 15 minutes to get this reply posted. :|

EDIT: My browser console's throwing quite a few warnings about racking, plus a whole bunch of wacky Javascript errors. Server's rejecting everything with HTTP429.

Is your mobile Apple? How about on a PC / Android device? Kinda grasping at this point - the only things consistent I can think of from what you told me is Apple and perhaps country of origin (not sure why either would be an issue, but...)

Got a VPN where you can send a request through a different country? What does that do?

HTTP429 - You're not running some kind of illicit zombie farm against CIN are you?!?

 

[Tess Sluijter]

Ha! It is in fact geolocation!

The problem persists on my Windows 11 laptop, regardless of home wifi or 4G mobile.

But when i setup a SOCKS proxy via my Dreamhost server in the USA, all CloudFlare problems went away. I'm posting and editing with zero problems.

@Stephen Schneiter and colleagues, could you please investigate why CIN's Cloudflare protection dislikes Europeans?

 

[Tess Sluijter]

Attached are two screenshots of what I keep seeing, every time I try to post, load a page or even click a "like" without proxying via the USA.

 

[Rick Butler]

Ha! It is in fact geolocation!

The problem persists on my Windows 11 laptop, regardless of home wifi or 4G mobile.

But when i setup a SOCKS proxy via my Dreamhost server in the USA, all CloudFlare problems went away. I'm posting and editing with zero problems.

@Stephen Schneiter and colleagues, could you please investigate why CIN's Cloudflare protection dislikes Europeans?

Well, we need a few Euros, perhaps some Africans to test, perhaps we can yield similar results? Maybe the Netherlands to start.

@Esther S. Stepansky - You're in Israel - do you have Cloudflare issues there?

I had a feeling it had something to do with location...

/r

 

[Steve Linthicum]

Hasn't this "Build the Wall" thing gone a bit too far?

 

[Rick Butler]

Hasn't this "Build the Wall" thing gone a bit too far?

I'm pretty sure those building those walls would disagree.

 

[Michael Schmitz]

I did not ran into that Problem yet, sorry. Connecting from Europe...

 

[Michael Schmitz]

I did not ran into that Problem yet, sorry. Connecting from Europe...

Correction, ,i just went to the Exam Site for Datasys, and cloudflare did pop up.
So yes, it is driving me crazy.... :-(

 

[Carnegie]

Well, we need a few Euros, perhaps some Africans to test, perhaps we can yield similar results? Maybe the Netherlands to start.

@Esther S. Stepansky - You're in Israel - do you have Cloudflare issues there?

I had a feeling it had something to do with location...

/r

This Cloudfare article, Gathering information for troubleshooting sites, may help our fellow CIN'ers outside the USA to assist in resolving the issue.

For example, this link, https://cin.comptia.org/cdn-cgi/trace , will identify the Cloudfare data center serving the user request.

Cheers,
Carnegie

 

[Michael Schmitz]

I had this today when accessing the CIN:


now it is working again... But someone seems to not monitoring this in his job...

 

[Tess Sluijter]

This Cloudfare article, Gathering information for troubleshooting sites, may help our fellow CIN'ers outside the USA to assist in resolving the issue.

For example, this link, https://cin.comptia.org/cdn-cgi/trace , will identify the Cloudfare data center serving the user request.

Cheers,
Carnegie

It's Amsterdam for me, which makes sense... But yeah, browsing and interacting with the forums is horribly painful.

 

[Michael Schmitz]

It's Amsterdam for me, which makes sense... But yeah, browsing and interacting with the forums is horribly painful.

Thanks.
For me it seems to be FRA = Frankfurt..
Why has the CIN be delivered by Cloudflare at all?
And sorry, as an Enduser the Problem should not be make us solving the work, that Cloudflare produce.
And the Certificate Error last week, that was an Error on the Cloudflare SIte, not mine..

These Links should the Website Owner use to check if there are Problems.
I mean, we as CIN Members to not run away, but webshop Customers, they would just go somewhere else to buy stuff.

M.

 

[Carnegie]

Thanks.
For me it seems to be FRA = Frankfurt..
Why has the CIN be delivered by Cloudflare at all?
And sorry, as an Enduser the Problem should not be make us solving the work, that Cloudflare produce.
And the Certificate Error last week, that was an Error on the Cloudflare SIte, not mine..

These Links should the Website Owner use to check if there are Problems.
I mean, we as CIN Members to not run away, but webshop Customers, they would just go somewhere else to buy stuff.

M.

Use of a content delivery network (CDN) like Cloudfare is modern, typical, and generally improves the user web experience. Providing support data and insight, we may help CompTIA and Cloudfare to resolve this issue experienced by our CompTiA colleagues outside the US. My Cloudflare data center location is IAD. I am physically closer to the CLT data center. The Cloudflare global network map of data centers may be found at this link, https://www.cloudflare.com/network/

 

[Michael Schmitz]

Use of a content delivery network (CDN) like Cloudfare is modern, typical, and generally improves the user web experience. Providing support data and insight, we may help CompTIA and Cloudfare to resolve this issue experienced by our CompTiA colleagues outside the US. ....

The First Sentence sound like c`n`p from the Cloudflare Markting Page.
Sure, i know there are reasons, but how to report it? i never noticed before this Posting, that CIN uses CF, and i did run in the Problems as well.
So, Certificate Issues are to monitor from CL

Hope it works now better...

 

[Carnegie]

The First Sentence sound like c`n`p from the Cloudflare Markting Page.
Sure, i know there are reasons, but how to report it? i never noticed before this Posting, that CIN uses CF, and i did run in the Problems as well.
So, Certificate Issues are to monitor from CL

Hope it works now better...

My posts are my own original thoughts. Of course, my intelligence has been artificial since I did "Call -151" on my 6502 Apple ][+.

The link provided earlier has insightful information on the landing page. In particular, the "What is your latency to our network? - Run test" is a very good resource. Like you, I am learning how our worldwide CIN forum utilizes Cloudfare. In the footer of each CIN forum page, you may click "Contact Us" to report issues.

 

[Tess Sluijter]

Whelp... It's been a few weeks and my support requests to CompTIA have fallen on deaf ears. No response from the support team and Stephen also didn't show up in this thread. I'm waiting to see if Luke can get me any further, via escalation. In the mean time, I'm falling back on using SSH+SOCKS to get around CloudFlare. It's kinda nuts that I have to, just to talk to you people.