from Hacker News

WARP is here

by BCM43 on 9/25/19, 1:01 PM with 365 comments

  • by mwcampbell on 9/25/19, 1:58 PM

    I was openly critical of Cloudflare when they announced Warp the first time. My accusations were over-reaching, and I ultimately retracted them. But I'm still skeptical, and I still won't use Warp.

    Here's what still bothers me: Cloudflare is a single company with points of presence all over the world, handling traffic for websites all over the world (including some big ones), and now trying to attract consumers worldwide to proxy their traffic through its network. That's a lot of power, and we all know the saying about power and corruption. It doesn't matter how conscientious the leadership are. I'd prefer that the temptation to abuse that power was just not there at all.

    My idea of a better Internet is a return to the way the Internet was -- a large number of small providers, communicating with each other over open standard protocols. So, yes, I should switch to something other than Comcast here in my apartment. So far, I've been afraid that doing that would leave me with a truly abysmal quality of service. (I'm in Bellevue, Washington.) But at least I can avoid adding Cloudflare, with its terrifying power, to the mix.

    Granted, I mostly use the Internet on a stationary computer with a cable connection at home. About the only thing I do on my phone away from a WiFi connection is request an Uber ride. And I do need that to work reliably. But it is working just fine without Warp. So, maybe Warp is just not for me. Still, for the people that would benefit, I'm afraid of how much more power they're going to be giving Cloudflare when they tap that "on" button.

  • by tptacek on 9/25/19, 4:19 PM

    Exciting! We're a tiny company and have sponsored WireGuard two years in a row; you can see us on the WireGuard home page. Cloudflare is a gigantic company who just used the WireGuard design work to fork the project. Has Cloudflare given a cent to WireGuard? Why isn't their logo on the site?

  • by eis on 9/25/19, 1:52 PM

    The article mentions that WARP is exposing the end user's IP to websites they visit. I'd be interested in how they do that, especially with HTTPS websites where they can't MITM and inject headers.

    > WARP is not designed to allow you to access geo-restricted content when you’re traveling. It will not hide your IP address from the websites you visit.

  • by sebasmurphy on 9/25/19, 3:35 PM

    Just going to throw this out there for anyone who is hesitant using a vpn managed by another service. You can set up your own easily using the ansible scripts provided by trailofbits, which supports both IPSEC and wireguard.

    https://github.com/trailofbits/algo

    a small DO (Digital Ocean) instance is only $5 a month and comes with 1TB outbound bandwidth (last I checked), which ends up being cheaper than most commercial offerings.

  • by mleonhard on 9/26/19, 2:07 AM

    Cloudflare WARP is an easy-to-use free VPN which protects your IP address from businesses who haven't paid Cloudflare yet.

    Companies like InfoUSA can convert 95% of US IP addresses to physical addresses and household resident names. By inserting themselves in the network between users and websites, Cloudflare will soon be able to get a chunk of InfoUSA's advertising profits.

    Remember, if you aren't paying for it then you are the product.

    Stay away from Cloudflare WARP and use a real VPN.

  • by xorcist on 9/25/19, 3:23 PM

    I fully understand why a company would like to launch this type of service. This is the free market after all, and it would make the company insanely valuable, should it succeed.

    However I do have an issue with the marketing behind it. While not said outright, there is a clear message here that due to some unspecified magic your network performance will increase. That's clearly stretching the laws of physics, at the very least. There are also nebulous privacy statements which looks conspicuously like services that shield your identity, which does not seem to be the case here.

    If the real intent here is to help underprivileged Internet users escape their great firewall, onboarding some regular users might be necessary to make the service more legitimate. However even a generous reading of this announcement does not seem to support this use case. The consumer VPN business is a questionable business at best, and this does not look different.

  • by losvedir on 9/25/19, 5:05 PM

    Great that it's finally launched. I've been on the waitlist for months.

    That said, I'm very ambivalent about Cloudflare.

    On the one hand, I love them because they're doing a lot of cool stuff (shoutout to kentonv whose sandstorm project I loved, who works there now), and even own a bit of their stock.

    On the other hand, them being an infrastructure company but also wading into what travels over their pipes makes me uncomfortable. I get that 8chan was horrible (and Stormfront before that, IIRC), but it shows more discretion than I'd like that that level of the stack. They seemed to be more hands-off in the past, so I wonder if the IPO changed that at all.

    A policy question: forbidding 8chan as a Cloudflare customer is one thing, but what if someone was using Warp and tried to load wherever it is they moved to? Would Warp block that?

  • by steveklabnik on 9/25/19, 1:54 PM

    There's also a technical version of this post: https://blog.cloudflare.com/warp-technical-challenges/

    I'm hyped to see Rust code running on so many phones.

  • by ksec on 9/25/19, 2:03 PM

    Just wanted to say Thank You. I could only wish this was released a little sooner, but better late than Never. The Hong Kong people desperately need something like this to avoid ISP monitoring. I wonder if something similar is planned for Windows and Mac?

    P.S Regarding the 10GB, have been on the waiting list since April 1st, nothing shown up yet.

  • by rmateu on 9/25/19, 3:50 PM

    1.1.1.1 DNS and mobile app have improved my internet experience considerably outside the US (currently in Costa Rica). I'm very excited about WARP and totally buy the "everyday user" premise.

    As soon as it feels stable I'm telling my activist brother-in-law in Venezuela to install it and enable WARP. Personally I trust Cloudflare above any ISP. I see myself installing it over holidays to the rest of the family there.

    I understand and celebrate HN's high level discussion about concentration of power on the internet and its effects. But at the same time I want to celebrate a geeky company, releasing something cool, with a free tier – and an evident openness about its plans and how it works. Congrats on the launch!

  • by the_duke on 9/25/19, 2:46 PM

    I can't really see the value proposition here.

    Most use a VPN to add a layer of anonymity (hidden IP) and to circumvent geo blocking.

    All this does is hide unencrypted traffic from the local network and maybe give a moderate speedup, but one that will probably be restricted to non-Cloudflare properties. For other properties, especially high-traffic ones with their own fancy routing logic, this will probably be more detrimental than helpful.

    Admittedly a lot of people also just use VPNs because of the countless ads telling them that the Web is terribly insecure without one. I don't see this being much of a success without big ad spending.

    Might work out just fine for CF, but I will pass.

  • by kristofferR on 9/25/19, 2:16 PM

    It's borderline unusable for me.

    It takes 20 seconds for every YouTube video to load while they load instantaneous without WARP:

    https://streamable.com/9tp1k

  • by trollied on 9/25/19, 4:30 PM

    Someone’s already got it working on macOS: https://twitter.com/saurik/status/1176893448445558784

  • by throwid on 9/25/19, 4:32 PM

    I just bought a monthly 1.1.1.1 + WARP subscription, and it's slow as hell. Maybe because I'm in Indonesia. But it works just fine with WARP disabled.

    Another problem is 1.1.1.1 suddenly disconnected when I'm not browsing the internet, like watching videos or reading something on my phone.

    Hope you guys fix these problems soon.

  • by fragmede on 9/25/19, 6:28 PM

    I have a different reason for being unable to use Warp: I don't want to access a "proper" DNS server, I want a DNS server that blocks ads for me in Mobile Chrome (I am aware that ad-blocking is fully integrated w/ Mobile Safari). I currently use AdGuard to get this feature, which sets the DNS server to one that blackholes ad servers.

    Still, it's quite exciting that Cloudflare's finally released Warp, and that the waitlist for Warp was so long.

  • by Pigo on 9/25/19, 1:44 PM

    It sounds like an interesting product, but I'm wary of anything put out by the arbiters of the internet.

  • by david_shaw on 9/25/19, 10:24 PM

    > It will not hide your IP address from the websites you visit.

    This is an interesting design choice.

    I'm sure the idea here is to reduce the number of abuse complaints directed to Cloudflare, but it also seems to significantly reduce the value of the service.

    I'm excited to try WARP, but without IP masking, I'll need to keep paying for a commercial VPN service. If I'm already paying for a commercial VPN, I don't see why I'd ever use WARP.

    That said, I definitely trust Cloudflare more than PIA/NordVPN/etc. Some more "bulletproof" providers like Mullvad are probably even more trustworthy, but I don't think Cloudflare is going to mine (or sell) my data.

    At this point, I'm just not sure what use-case WARP would really fill for me.

  • by abtinf on 9/25/19, 2:39 PM

    Can someone explain the difference between warp and warp+? I’ve read the blog and the App Store description, both of which completely fail to identify the difference.

  • by fnordsensei on 9/25/19, 1:37 PM

    I'd perhaps consider Warp+ on a computer or the router, but on the phone it seems a bit overkill.

    (Though I haven't tried it. So far I haven't received the 10gb Argo credits described, despite being on the waiting list for yonks)

  • by philliphaydon on 9/25/19, 2:02 PM

    I switched it on this morning and switched it off again after 10 minutes. It was so slow I couldn’t load web pages or send messages on WhatsApp. Maybe too many people joining in a short time.

  • by ikeboy on 9/25/19, 3:59 PM

    Speedtest showing download speeds 3X slower (around 35MBPS vs 110).

    On PIA, which costs me around $3/month when I buy yearly, I get around 75MBPS, it does hide IP, and I can select the country and region I want. Also it's available on my computer and on multiple devices at once.

    I don't see the value of WARP+ at $4.99/month. Less features and slower.

  • by tosh on 9/25/19, 3:00 PM

    Super excited about 1.1.1. Warp.

    kudos @ launching, have been waiting for this

    How I see it: a well operated VPN service for whenever you trust Cloudflare more than the internet connection you’re currently on (coffee shop or airport wifi, co-working space, random mobile ISP when traveling or even at home, …).

    Compare this to the current best alternative: difficult to evaluate VPNs ranging from paid to free & non-trivial to set up.

    Not saying there are no alternatives but even for me it is not easy to tell which ones are actually better or in the same ballpark (@ trust, speed, ops-skills, …) let alone for the longtail of users who would be better off with something like Cloudflare than with a random shady VPN or nothing.

  • by mr_puzzled on 9/25/19, 4:18 PM

    Really cool service. Using warp on my phone and it surprisingly makes a big difference in locations with spotty 4G. Couple of questions :

    * I read that cloudflare generates a unique id for each install and the purpose was to track referrals. Consider adding an option to opt out of the unique id tracking since some users will be concerned about it.

    * Any plans to add an option to use an ip from cloudflare instead of my ip address being visible to the websites I visit, at least on the paid plan? I know this opens a can of worms dealing with abuse of the service which could lead to certain ip addresses belonging to cloudflare being blacklisted.

  • by godelmachine on 9/25/19, 6:46 PM

    Would anyone kindly elucidate on the difference between Warp vs VPN?

    I recently purchased Adblock by Futuremind from AppStore, since I got really worried about my privacy. It has some features like local proxy DNS and setting up new rules. I keep my VPN on all day.

    Before that, I used to use Hotspot Shield since that was free. I used to get only one server viz. USA.

    I see internet speaks highly of NordVPN but that’s a whopping $85 which kinda burns a hole in my pocket. They claim that PWC has done an audit on them and confirmed that they don’t save users data.

    Would someone here kindly guide me on the most reliable VPN out there, for iOS?

    Thanks in advance for sorting me out :)

  • by vijaybritto on 9/25/19, 3:32 PM

    Installed on android. Doesn't work. Says "connection interrupted". Looks like it needs more work.

  • by throwaway9d0291 on 9/25/19, 1:41 PM

    I'd really like to use this on my computer. The article says it uses the WireGuard protocol, can I just take the private key from my device, put it in a configuration file and use it?

  • by scoutt on 9/25/19, 3:31 PM

    Now that Cloudflare has their own VPN, will there be an increase in showing those annoying captcha/challenge pages for connections made from every other VPN/Tor?

  • by Animats on 9/25/19, 5:57 PM

    One backdoor to rule them all. They just have to be a target for NSA, the SVR, and the Third Department. How would you audit Cloudflare to find that?

  • by kylehotchkiss on 9/25/19, 2:05 PM

    Super excited to give this a few month paid trial. I've seen time and time again that Cloudflare takes the value of privacy seriously. Alternative VPNs seem to be running on AWS or GCP anyways.

    I spend a lot of time outside the USA and have privacy concerns a bit beyond USAs typical data collection. I've been enjoying the 1.1.1.1 app since April without issues.

    I'd love to see the speed comparison examples soon!

  • by gorbypark on 9/26/19, 5:06 PM

    I'm confused as to the difference between Warp and Warp+. Upgrading to Warp+ says it routes all your traffic through Cloudflare's servers. So I guess regular Warp doesn't, then. Is Warp "just" DNS over HTTPS/TLS and Warp+ is a more traditional VPN?

  • by hecatoncheires on 9/25/19, 3:08 PM

    If I were to use a VPN I'd stick with providers with proven track records of responding to court orders with empty logs, not the company with a CEO who capriciously kicks sites off their platform in response to online mobs.

    I'd also feel very uneasy with continuing to feed the consolidation of the internet's traffic. Giving full control of your phone's routing to Cloudflare is sold as improving performance, but what it also does is give Cloudflare a lot of flexibility to pay less in transit costs and have a stronger position for peering agreements. Today that might be good in preventing ISP shakedowns, but very bad tomorrow if ISPs have to pay Cloudflare for the privilege of accessing the majority of the internet.

  • by pingec on 9/25/19, 1:48 PM

    Since Cloudflare have their own network, would this be useful to use in countries where they have a reliable home internet but poor (bad latency/speed) links outside of the country?

    For example would remote desktop from Thailand or Philippines to Europe work more reliably?

  • by kev009 on 9/25/19, 9:11 PM

    This is a huge technical accomplishment if you peruse the related blog post https://blog.cloudflare.com/warp-technical-challenges/ around network topology. If you compare CF to Fastly, Akamai, and LLNW (the other 3 publicly traded CDNs) CF is so much better staffed and managed it is mind boggling to see how the others will remain relevant over a longer timescale. CF is one of the few recent tech IPOs where I haven't rolled my eyes and groaned. I used to work at one of the others so know quite a bit about this industry and how far behind the major players are.

  • by president on 9/25/19, 5:30 PM

    How does the end user know if WARP is actually working? As I understand it, a regular VPN will mask your IP so you can tell very easily if you’re protected by checking your externally reported IP. How would you know with WARP?

  • by bigmattystyles on 9/25/19, 4:42 PM

    Damn, I thought they had switched to OS/2

  • by peterwwillis on 9/25/19, 1:48 PM

    > WARP, instead, is built for the average consumer. It’s built to ensure that your data is secured while it’s in transit. So the networks between you and the applications you’re using can’t spy on you. It will help protect you from people sniffing your data while you’re at a local coffee shop. It will also help ensure that your ISP isn’t hoovering up data on your browsing patterns to sell to advertisers.

    Most of those consumers aren't aware of any of that, so if you want them to use it, you'll have to pay for marketing to bring it to their attention. Is that the plan?

  • by cpeterso on 9/25/19, 7:13 PM

    The 1.1.1.1 app's original UI was nice and simple: just a big switch. But trying to cram WARP and WARP+ into the same UI is confusing. The same switch is now used to show and control multiple states: Disconnected, Connecting, Connected to WARP, Connected to WARP+, and Paused. In addition, there is redundant UI to switch between WARP and WARP+ in the "Additional Settings" menu and to unpause on the main screen.

  • by Zenst on 9/25/19, 9:59 PM

    I'll give it a go, still have 1.1.1.1 installed, though disabled/stopped using it as upon my phone it just eat up battery. Kept trying on updates every now and then, but same. Though beyond that, can't say I've bothered to dig/look into it and figured due to my phone being a 3 year old mid-range affair, now what you would call low-end - though QC 430 2GB Ram kinda works ok.

  • by atonse on 9/25/19, 2:27 PM

    Great news! I'm still 155k on the warp waitlist since April. Is there a plan to push the waitlist along?

    I'd love to get my non-tech family on this.

  • by bithavoc on 9/25/19, 4:50 PM

    Love Warp, I was lucky enough to get into their Beta program via Testflight and it's been great and stable. many times I disabled it thinking my internet is broken because of Warp VPN and turns out to be my provider or wifi that is just down.

    I wish they provided a desktop version, or at least to change all the traffic from my central MikroTik router to use Warp.

  • by Sami_Lehtinen on 9/25/19, 2:30 PM

    Nobody mentioned IPv6 support yet. It's nice as well. There are many VPN providers out there without IPv6 support.

  • by acdha on 9/25/19, 7:59 PM

    This looks like a neat idea but I’ve haven't gotten it to connect on two WiFi networks or T-Mobile LTE. The one thing which could explain that is it showing me as having 0MB of WARP+ but there’s no way I’m paying before I can test it and it seems pointless if it requires the network provider to enable it.

  • by kevincox on 9/26/19, 3:52 PM

    One nice thing about this is that it allows accessing IPv6 sites over and IPv4-only connection.

    I'll definitely be using this as I can only connect to my house via IPv6 and my mobile provider doesn't offer it. This means that I can just toggle on the VPN for when I need IPv6 connectivity.

  • by fc_barnes on 9/25/19, 3:38 PM

    I'm confused about who sees what IP when. I'm also confused about the bandwidth limits on plus. Having essentially two products blended together, and using new technology that behaves uniquely, makes the communication lift here that much heavier.

  • by cocoggu on 9/25/19, 2:30 PM

    Works fine in Beijing, thanks!

  • by cj on 9/25/19, 4:25 PM

    I signed up for Cloudflare Warp last night.

    Any idea why iOS apps seem to not want to update using Warp? I’ve noticed the same when using other VPNs (including on Android).

    I disabled Warp this morning after the Apple App Store wouldn’t update apps.

  • by antpls on 9/28/19, 8:11 AM

    Tried on Android 9, installed the VPN and turned on "always-on" mode and "disallow non-VPN connections". Telegram and Instagram stopped to work, so I uninstalled.

  • by dang on 9/25/19, 9:34 PM

  • by hdivider on 9/25/19, 7:40 PM

    I love it. You always have to make privacy and security tradeoffs -- and to me WARP is a promising initiative.

    Question: is there an OSX version? Or am I just blind? :)

  • by ummonk on 9/25/19, 3:55 PM

    Congratulations on launching another great feature! I've been patiently on the waitlist for a very long time now, and it's great to see it out now!

  • by fooey on 9/25/19, 3:56 PM

    I wonder if there's any chance they'll add an ad blocking feature.

    I'd probably give WARP a shot but I'm not willing to give up DNS66 to switch over

  • by gregimba on 9/25/19, 10:58 PM

    > days before the April 1 planned roll out. Please don't launch actual software on April 1st.

  • by sb057 on 9/25/19, 2:54 PM

    Does WARP block access to websites that Cloudflare has specifically denied a platform to their other services? It only makes sense that if they refused to do business with a website because they are "an environment that revels in violating [the spirit of anti-hate law]" that they would also prevent end-users from accessing it under the same grounds, no?

  • by sascha_sl on 9/25/19, 3:56 PM

    Argo is really cool... and also really unaffordable and solving a problem we wouldn't have in the first place if "net neutrality" was something tier 3 ISPs took seriously and stopped routing me across the world to save a few cents because one of their upstream provider provides cheaper bandwidth on a less congested route.

  • by lone_haxx0r on 9/27/19, 12:00 AM

    After they abandoned 8chan, I don't think I'll ever trust this company again.

  • by acd10j on 9/26/19, 11:07 AM

    Can't connect to Warp+ and Warp on phone when connected with office Wifi Network.

  • by toothandtail on 9/25/19, 4:35 PM

    My upload speed is horrendous using this. Usually 15mb now 0.72?

  • by RyanShook on 9/26/19, 3:37 AM

    Having a hard time seeing why consumers want or need this.

  • by leoplct on 9/25/19, 9:44 PM

    Can you tell me a what I am risking not using WARP?

  • by hckrzulu on 9/25/19, 1:55 PM

    How would this work together with nextdns.io?

  • by lighttower on 9/25/19, 9:50 PM

    Does anyone know if it breaks VoWifi?

  • by sabujp on 9/25/19, 11:56 PM

    what is this exactly? proxying all your data through cloudflare or just dns traffic?

  • by WhompingWindows on 9/25/19, 3:22 PM

    Can someone here give me a layman's rundown of WARP and why I might want to use it on my Android phone?

  • by stunt on 9/25/19, 2:47 PM

    Nothing is free!

  • by OrgNet on 9/25/19, 3:44 PM

    is that a VPN? why did it take so long to implement as they stated multiple times?

    I try to avoid Cloudflare if I have an option because they are getting too big.

  • by xwdv on 9/25/19, 3:17 PM

    Just a reminder that Cloudflare is now a publicly traded company, and if you would have bought at the IPO at $18 you would be up 15% by now, with more expected to come.

  • by quotemstr on 9/25/19, 4:26 PM

    I'm sure as hell not going to trust Cloudflare with my DNS, and I'm especially not going to route all my traffic through them. That company shredded its credibility. Centralization always leads to corruption.

  • by sigmar on 9/25/19, 3:15 PM

    [In order to not spread bad info I'm deleting my paragraph where I misunderstand what WARP is]

    Even this blog post is confusing "From a technical perspective, WARP is a VPN." Then contrasts WARP with a "traditional VPN"

  • by GauntletWizard on 9/26/19, 12:30 AM

    I did a ctrl+f for "Onavo" and got nothing, so I'm going to say it loudly and publicly: There's no such thing as a free (lunch) VPN. Sure, Cloudflare has a premium product available, but the availability of a free version (not a free trial) means that, most likely, you're not the customer - You're the product. Your data, your browsing history, encrypted though they may be, are valauable to Cloudflare.