For Australian Customers
I’ve set up on the free service to test it and the site is significantly slower when testing on pingdom from an Australian server than say a USA server.
Like a load time of 4.3 sec vs 1.2 from other locations.
I then found this post on another website that says even though there are local servers they are not used for free accounts? https://silvercode.com.au/cloudflares-cdn-is-likely-making-your-australian-website-slower/
Obviously this is third party (maybe with an axe to grind?) but they are claiming Cloudflare will actually slow a site down compared to local hosting.
Have to say I’m a bit confused with this - but I’m certainly not seeing any speed increases.
Any ideas how to progress this? will Cloudflare only use Australian servers for paid accounts - if so what level do I need to have that facility?
I don’t know why that article is dated a month ago because it’s based on pretty old information (2016).
If you look at the response headers, it should show you the datacenter code (three letters that corresponds with a local airport code).
Thanks so much for your help there -
Not sure I found the correct section but I have
{“endpoints”:[{“url”:“https://a.nel.Cloudflare.com/report/v3?s=7+mmP7dacUr0Z75I6KRh06w4WO7dZL/lCHVD7p15YqnpkwJEwJNd3sa7hxgEEOKsnii4Ar2/KtnYIzBfxAO/Re+MCQoaHmBkTuDlLgmROfnjh9S1wPqGZcGOTL2c+FRz9hcTifp1nwGwpg==”}],“group”:“cf-nel”,“max_age”:604800}
Try this:
https://cloudflare-test.judge.sh/
Thanks for that - so did the look up there (see image) and looks like couldflare free service is hosted in Singapore (not local) and for some reason my site is currently hosted in Japan (Narita)
If I’m reading that correctly I’ll need business or professional account to get local Australian
servers
It really depends on your and your customers’ ISP in Australia, Telstra and Optus (Singtel) don’t play nice, so free plans usually get routed to Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong for those ISPs
Edit, Aussiebroadband in Perth for example:
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Awesome, thanks for the feedback - I’ll talk to support and see if they can guarantee local server with a pro plan. I’m not too worried about paying, just need to know we are getting what we need. Unfortunately they don’t address that on their website 
Do you happen to know with pro plan is that one site per plan or can I have multiple sites on it?
Again it’s not clear on the cloudflare website pages.
Thanks for your help guys - really appreciate getting some answers on this.
I doubt you’ll get a guarantee, as it depends on your ISP as @soldier_21 mentioned and the load at that POP at any given time.
Paid plans are per domain (and its subdomains).
For Australia, need at least CF Business or Enterprise plan 
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I’m in Australia and have websites hosted in the US. Only one of my Cloudflare sites is on the Pro plan. It does perform better on Pro, but the difference you’re asking about here with datacenters almost always comes down to whether it hits on Melbourne (closer to me) or Sydney. I haven’t noticed any datacenter hits outside of Australia recently on either Pro or Free.
The Pro site reliably hits on the Melbourne datacenter (good) and the free site hits on Sydney instead (not bad). The difference between them in TTFB isn’t worth worrying about, in my opinion.
If you expect a majority of your users will be in Australia, then local hosting may work out just slightly better for TTFB. But I think you’re going to spend about the same per month for a decent AU host compared to a US host + Pro plan.
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I run a few sites on free, pro, and business. Im in Australia and the servers are also in Australia.
I don’t test the free plans but the pro plans often connect via Singapore but it must depend on the time of day.
Testing Pro now on a Saturday night local time Im seeing all connections local at around 30-50ms.
It’s something to do with the cost of local traffic and for $20 per month you can’t expect much.
The business plans always connect locally to Sydney, Brisbane, or Melbourne depending on where you are, they are always super fast although it’s a big price jump from pro to business, and to be honest the traffic via Singapore is unnoticeable for a web site, if you’re running something else it may make a difference.
I need to check the headers to know but the connection usually jumps from about 40ms local to 140ms-200ms via Singapore.
I don’t think there are any guarantees that you will get the local servers on Business, but I always seem to.
The load difference of 4 seconds to 1.2 seconds is more than the server distance at play I think.
Try running Argo, it will probably have a much greater impact than upgrading your plan and getting closer traffic. I’m not sure why Argo even exists, I don’t really understand it or why it’s a paid service, but give it a shot.
- Scott
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Clients are not guaranteed to connect 100% of time to a certain POP. You have to consider client’s ISP peering arrangements.
For example for most people in New Zealand connection to Cloudflare will end in Auckland but those using Spark will always be connected to Australian POPs because Spark refuses to peer with Cloudflare. It’s better than before as their routes used to go to all the way to the Tokyo POP a few months back.
Some ISPs will have limits per route/peering so if the limits are reached the overflow traffic will go through alternative routes which may not be optimal and at times of peak load clients might end up in different POPs.
And sometimes a Cloudflare POP is under maintenance or degraded so connections will be to another POP.
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