Network performance update: Birthday Week 2023

Cloudflare has been consistently measuring its network performance against other providers since June 2021, sharing benchmarking results to assess improvements in comparison. In August 2023, Cloudflare was the fastest provider for 44% of networks and within 5% of the fastest provider for an additional 10%. This growth has been steady with a higher rate of increase than other providers. Cloudflare uses Real User Measurements (RUM) to monitor various performance metrics, such as TCP Connection Time and Time to First Byte (TTFB), comparing their data with competitors like Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly, and Google Cloud CDN. The company aims to be the fastest provider in most last mile networks by closely monitoring its rankings based on these metrics. In terms of geographical performance, Cloudflare's network has become faster in Iran and Paraguay since June 2023 but remains within 1-2ms of competitors Fastly, Amazon CloudFront, and Akamai in countries like Brazil, Norway, and various African nations. The company plans to continue monitoring its performance against other providers, identifying areas for improvement, resolving any issues, and sharing updates on their journey to become the fastest network globally.