Subject: Why is my site coming from California?!

Customer's ticket "I’m in London, but looking at your IPs it shows that you are serving my website from
Can that be right? Why is that? I thought you were supposed to serve my website from some places close to me?"

Dear Customer,

Thank you for reaching out to Cloudflare Support. I understand your concern about your website being served from California while you are based in London. Allow me to explain how Cloudflare's Content Delivery Network (CDN) works and why you might be seeing this behavior.

Understanding Cloudflare's CDN

Cloudflare operates a global network of data centers designed to deliver your website's content to users as quickly as possible,

regardless of their geographical location. Here are some key points about our CDN:

1. Global Load Balancing:
   • Our CDN dynamically routes traffic

   through our global network based on real-time analysis of network conditions, load balancing, and traffic patterns.

   • This ensures that we can provide the fastest and most reliable service to your users.
2. Optimized Performance:
• Sometimes, due to network congestion, maintenance, or other factors, our system may temporarily route traffic

through a data center that is not the closest to the user. This is done to maintain optimal performance and reliability.

3. Redundancy and Failover:
• To ensure high availability, our CDN can reroute traffic

through alternate data centers if the nearest one is experiencing issues.

• This redundancy is a critical part of maintaining continuous service for your website.

Steps to Verify and Improve Your Experience

1. Check the Serving Data Center:

You can inspect the headers of requests to your website to see which Cloudflare data center is

serving your traffic. Here’s how you can do it:

• Open your website in a browser.
• Right-click and select "Inspect" or "Inspect Element".
• Go to the "Network" tab and reload the page.
• Click on any request to your domain and look at the response headers for the cf-ray header. The last three characters of this header indicate the data center code (e.g., LHR for London).
2. Review Cloudflare Dashboard:

• Log in to your Cloudflare dashboard and check the analytics section for insights into where your

traffic is being served from. This can help you understand traffic patterns and any anomalies.

3. Performance Optimization:
• Ensure that your website's performance settings in the Cloudflare dashboard are optimized.
• Features such as caching, Argo Smart Routing, and load balancing can further enhance the delivery of your content.
4. Contact Support for Persistent Issues:
• If you consistently notice your site being served from California and it affects performance, please provide us with the cf-ray header values from your inspection
• This will help us investigate and make any necessary adjustments to improve your experience.

Example of Checking Headers

Here’s an example of what you might see in the headers when inspecting network requests:

In this example, LHR indicates that the request is being served from Cloudflare's London data center.

Cloudflare's CDN is designed to optimize the delivery of your content globally, providing a balance

between speed, reliability, and security. We appreciate your understanding and are here to assist you

in ensuring your site performs optimally.

If you have any further questions or need additional assistance, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Best regards,
Saber Moahmed
Cloudflare Support Team