I'm an idiot when it comes to servers, but have done the admin support job for couple hosted web sites.
Here is what I know:
Cloudflare is strange beast. Best described as 'cloud based' dynamic firewall with storage.
Primary purpose is hide a web sites IP address to enable filtering out the hacker packet flooding that crashes web sites. They are connected directly to fiber-optic back bone of net and can filter out billions of errant packets per second, while only letting the real packets from users getting through. One trick they use to stop hackers is changing IP address when botnet is sending 'bad' traffic to a protected IP address. They can change global DNS and reroute an IP in couple of minutes.
The second service they offer is localized file cache to reduce server traffic. They have huge data caches that store locally popular web sites, so there is no need to get a new copy - unless it changes.
They have rooms full of hardware installed in every major network switching center in US and EU to provide this service.
That said:
The 520 errors we keep seeing are a problem between the LJ hosting servers and Cloudflare. There is nothing a user can do that stop the errors. There is probably nothing our site admin (Cricket) can do either, as they only touch the forum software and database(s) of forum data.
The note above that changing DNS from default dynamic assignment (normally inside local network and fastest), to a foreign DNS server (slower) should not make any difference. All you are doing it adding some delay between DNS request and web site request.
BUT,
If delay helps surfing, that coupled with fact that many errors I see are on brand new threads, or making new posts to site; then it points out that our host server has an issue with data transfer for new content.
BTW - I would be really curious to see DNS change makes a difference when posting new content. That almost always returns 520 error lately? May have to play with that later.
There are lots of things that can be a problem. I'd bet money there is server somewhere with some really ugly log files showing failure to fill data requests. Challenge is which one. Could be network processor routing bandwidth issue, storage array failing, or something as simple as bad cables between LJ server and host infrastructure. Regardless, LJ host needs to figure it out, not users.
I posted some Ray Id's hoping it could help Host, but they probably don't even read this forum and see the data.
Cricket: I'd be happy to privately help our hosts with more data if they need it to resolve the issue. It's been happening for 5+ days and is getting worse.
BTW - the ads on bottom of site are randomly returning error 520 also the last couple days.
Cheers!
I'm sure she's not a happy camper right about now!
