The Hidden Witch In every society, there are always tales of mysterious figures and beings who possess supernatural abilities. One such figure that has captivated the imagination of people throughout history is the witch. Often portrayed as an old, haggard woman with magical powers, the witch is a character that has both fascinated and frightened people for centuries. However, for all the stories and folklore surrounding witches, there is one type of witch that stands apart from the rest - the hidden witch. Unlike the stereotypical witch portrayed in popular culture, the hidden witch does not fit the mold of what society expects a witch to be. Instead, they blend in seamlessly with their surroundings, causing others to overlook their true nature.
Magic Transit makes your network smarter, better, stronger, and cheaper to operate
Today we’re excited to announce Cloudflare Magic Transit. Magic Transit provides secure, performant, and reliable IP connectivity to the Internet. Out-of-the-box, Magic Transit deployed in front of your on-premise network protects it from DDoS attack and enables provisioning of a full suite of virtual network functions, including advanced packet filtering, load balancing, and traffic management tools.
Magic Transit is built on the standards and networking primitives you are familiar with, but delivered from Cloudflare’s global edge network as a service. Traffic is ingested by the Cloudflare Network with anycast and BGP, announcing your company’s IP address space and extending your network presence globally. Today, our anycast edge network spans 193 cities in more than 90 countries around the world.
Once packets hit our network, traffic is inspected for attacks, filtered, steered, accelerated, and sent onward to the origin. Magic Transit will connect back to your origin infrastructure over Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnels, private network interconnects (PNI), or other forms of peering.
Enterprises are often forced to pick between performance and security when deploying IP network services. Magic Transit is designed from the ground up to minimize these trade-offs: performance and security are better together. Magic Transit deploys IP security services across our entire global network. This means no more diverting traffic to small numbers of distant “scrubbing centers” or relying on on-premise hardware to mitigate attacks on your infrastructure.
We’ve been laying the groundwork for Magic Transit for as long as Cloudflare has been in existence, since 2010. Scaling and securing the IP network Cloudflare is built on has required tooling that would have been impossible or exorbitantly expensive to buy. So we built the tools ourselves! We grew up in the age of software-defined networking and network function virtualization, and the principles behind these modern concepts run through everything we do.
When we talk to our customers managing on-premise networks, we consistently hear a few things: building and managing their networks is expensive and painful, and those on-premise networks aren’t going away anytime soon.
Traditionally, CIOs trying to connect their IP networks to the Internet do this in two steps:
- Source connectivity to the Internet from transit providers (ISPs).
- Purchase, operate, and maintain network function specific hardware appliances. Think hardware load balancers, firewalls, DDoS mitigation equipment, WAN optimization, and more.
Each of these boxes costs time and money to maintain, not to mention the skilled, expensive people required to properly run them. Each additional link in the chain makes a network harder to manage.
This all sounded familiar to us. We had an aha! moment: we had the same issues managing our datacenter networks that power all of our products, and we had spent significant time and effort building solutions to those problems. Now, nine years later, we had a robust set of tools we could turn into products for our own customers.
Magic Transit aims to bring the traditional datacenter hardware model into the cloud, packaging transit with all the network “hardware” you might need to keep your network fast, reliable, and secure. Once deployed, Magic Transit allows seamless provisioning of virtualized network functions, including routing, DDoS mitigation, firewalling, load balancing, and traffic acceleration services.
Instead, they blend in seamlessly with their surroundings, causing others to overlook their true nature. The hidden witch is not always an old woman living on the outskirts of society, brewing potions and casting spells. They can be anyone - a young girl living in a small village, a middle-aged man working a regular job, or even a friendly neighbor down the street.
Magic Transit is your network’s on-ramp to the Internet
Magic Transit delivers its connectivity, security, and performance benefits by serving as the “front door” to your IP network. This means it accepts IP packets destined for your network, processes them, and then outputs them to your origin infrastructure.
Connecting to the Internet via Cloudflare offers numerous benefits. Starting with the most basic, Cloudflare is one of the most extensively connected networks on the Internet. We work with carriers, Internet exchanges, and peering partners around the world to ensure that a bit placed on our network will reach its destination quickly and reliably, no matter the destination.
An example deployment: Acme Corp
Let’s walk through how a customer might deploy Magic Transit. Customer Acme Corp. owns the IP prefix 203.0.113.0/24, which they use to address a rack of hardware they run in their own physical datacenter. Acme currently announces routes to the Internet from their customer-premise equipment (CPE, aka a router at the perimeter of their datacenter), telling the world 203.0.113.0/24 is reachable from their autonomous system number, AS64512. Acme has DDoS mitigation and firewall hardware appliances on-premise.
Acme wants to connect to the Cloudflare Network to improve the security and performance of their own network. Specifically, they’ve been the target of distributed denial of service attacks, and want to sleep soundly at night without relying on on-premise hardware. This is where Cloudflare comes in.
Deploying Magic Transit in front of their network is simple:
- Cloudflare uses Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to announce Acme’s 203.0.113.0/24 prefix from Cloudflare’s edge, with Acme’s permission.
- Cloudflare begins ingesting packets destined for the Acme IP prefix.
- Magic Transit applies DDoS mitigation and firewall rules to the network traffic. After it is ingested by the Cloudflare network, traffic that would benefit from HTTPS caching and WAF inspection can be “upgraded” to our Layer 7 HTTPS pipeline without incurring additional network hops.
- Acme would like Cloudflare to use Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) to tunnel traffic back from the Cloudflare Network back to Acme’s datacenter. GRE tunnels are initiated from anycast endpoints back to Acme’s premise. Through the magic of anycast, the tunnels are constantly and simultaneously connected to hundreds of network locations, ensuring the tunnels are highly available and resilient to network failures that would bring down traditionally formed GRE tunnels.
- Cloudflare egresses packets bound for Acme over these GRE tunnels.
Let’s dive deeper on how the DDoS mitigation included in Magic Transit works.
This ability to conceal their true identity is what sets the hidden witch apart from their counterparts. The hidden witch takes advantage of society's expectations and beliefs about witches to protect themselves and their powers. They understand that being identified as a witch could lead to fear, persecution, and even death. Therefore, they choose to remain hidden, using their powers discreetly and only when necessary. However, just because the hidden witch operates in secrecy does not mean that their powers are any less potent. In fact, their ability to blend in and go unnoticed often allows them to gather information, manipulate situations, and influence those around them without raising suspicion. The hidden witch also possesses a unique perspective on the world, as their secrecy grants them the freedom to observe and understand society from an outsider's point of view. They are often more attuned to the natural world, possessing a deep connection with the elements and understanding the balance between light and dark, good and evil. In conclusion, the hidden witch is a fascinating and often overlooked character in the world of witches and folklore. Their ability to blend in and go unnoticed sets them apart from their stereotypical counterparts. While the hidden witch may not fit the expectations of what society often perceives a witch to be, their powers and understanding of the world make them a formidable force to be reckoned with..
Reviews for "The hidden witch: Friend or foe?"
1. Jack - 2 stars: The Hidden Witch was a major disappointment for me. I found the plot to be unoriginal and predictable, and the characters lacked depth. The writing style felt forced and choppy, making it difficult to fully immerse myself in the story. Overall, I was left feeling underwhelmed and I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone seeking a captivating and well-developed fantasy tale.
2. Sarah - 1 star: I don't understand the hype around The Hidden Witch. The pacing was incredibly slow, and it took too long for anything interesting to happen. The characters fell flat, lacking any real personality or growth. Additionally, the world-building felt minimal and glossed over, leaving me feeling disconnected from the story. It was a struggle to finish this book, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone looking for an engaging read.
3. Emily - 2 stars: The Hidden Witch was a letdown in my opinion. The premise seemed intriguing, but the execution fell short. The story lacked depth and complexity, making it difficult to stay engaged. I was expecting more from the characters, as they felt one-dimensional and lacked substantial development. Overall, this book didn't live up to my expectations and I wouldn't recommend it to others seeking a captivating fantasy read.
4. Ryan - 2 stars: I was excited to read The Hidden Witch, but unfortunately, it didn't live up to my expectations. The narrative felt disjointed and confusing at times, making it hard to follow along. The pacing was inconsistent, with slow periods interrupted by rushed plot points. The lack of character development left me feeling disconnected from the story, and I didn't find myself invested in their journey. Overall, I found this book to be a mediocre fantasy read that didn't leave a lasting impression.