NEWBIE IP Confusion

[photography]

I’m in over my head with this… just wanted to speed up my site that is extremely photo heavy.

My site is hosted through web.com. After Cloudflare installation, Web.com now insists that Cloudflare is the host and no longer hosted by web.com.

But the IP address I use to xfer files with Transmit is clearly still hosting with web.com and has not changed.

The web.com folks showed me two different IP addresses (looked up through whatsmydns.net and whoishostingthis.com) that are not theirs, but are Cloudflare’s. Neither of these two match the IP address I use with Transmit.

How have I ended up with an IP address for Transmit, two different IP addresses when you look them up online and yet another different one that shows up in the Cloudflare DNS “A” record.

How is this possible? Should I be worried? I’ve searched through the help materials and it’s like speaking Greek. Clearly NOT my forte!

[domjh]

Hi @photography,

This should help clear it up:

Why does a DNS lookup on my domain not return the IP address I configured?

This tutorial explains why, when doing a DNS lookup on your domain, you may see IP addresses that are different to those you specified in your DNS records. What are the addresses I see? The addresses you see will likely begin 104. and they are Cloudflare’s IP addresses. Note: Some domains may see three Cloudflare IPs, usually two starting with 104. and one starting with 172. Why do I see these addresses and not the IP that I set? If you have Cloudflare proxying your site, i.e. you have the …

Essentially, they are still your host but you/they see Cloudflare’s IP addresses because Cloudflare sits in front of your server.

[photography]

Fantastic explanation! Not sure why web.com folks were so freaked out.
In the same theme, I have two “A” records. On gray, one orange. I had renewed my own SSL certificate through Web.com and I believe it carries over? Can I get rid of the gray “A” record? They use the same “Content” number.

Again, any help is GREATLY appreciated. I keep getting stuck, but this should help.

[domjh]

Glad it helped! No, I guess they’re not really familiar with Cloudflare or what it is/does.

As for the records you have, do you have any subdomains like name.yourdomain.com that don’t have their own DNS record? If not, then you can delete the * record that’s .

[photography]

No subdomains. I’m taking the plunge and deleting it. THANK YOU!
You’re a lot better at explaining things and much faster than their support (who keep quoting the articles that don’t answer my questions). Again, Thank you!

[domjh]

Fantastic, if anything breaks you can always re-add it and come back with any questions!

Support are very good on the higher plans, but response times are quite long, especially on the free plan. Glad I could help!

[photography]

You called it… I deleted the “A” record and it started giving 504 Errors and timing out on the blog section of my site. That’s the only word press section of the site.
I added that record back in and it works again. Not a sub domain though. It’s just https://www.marcicurtis.com/blog/. Even that would sometimes come up, but you couldn’t click around or get into the back end of it.
Any suggestions? Does keeping the gray “DNS ONLY” identical cloud hurt me in any way? Originally I believe support said it would keep me from enjoying all the benefits of Cloudflare. Sounded a bit dramatic
Again, THANK YOU!

[domjh]

Hmm… that wildcard record shouldn’t have anything to do with your blog, because it’s a directory and not a subdomain.

You can leave it there, but any subdomains not explicitly defined won’t get Cloudflare’s protection and it leaves your server’s IP address visible.

I’m not sure which errors you are getting, but you mentioned 504 and timeout, so here’s some info on those.

The 502/504 errors are caused by a problem connecting to an upstream server - meaning your server is trying to initiate a process and this fails to work as expected or times out. In most cases of 502 / 504 errors, back-end servers are not communicating correctly. When this happens, you will see color page with Cloudflare branding and the Error 502 Bad Gateway or Error 504 Gateway Timeout. Review this Community Tip for fixing 502 or 504 gateway errors.

A 524 error indicates that Cloudflare made a successful TCP connection to the origin web server, but the origin did not reply with an HTTP response before the connection timed out. Review the suggestions in this Community Tip for troubleshooting ideas.