Cloudflare’s Network Now Reaches 10,000 Neighbors
During Speed Week, Cloudflare has detailed product improvements and expansion efforts. The final milestone: Cloudflare now connects directly with more than 10,000 other networks. That means over 10,000 autonomous systems have direct on-ramps to Cloudflare’s infrastructure.
This achievement stems from an internal effort dubbed Project Myriagon, named after the 10,000-sided polygon. The project’s goal was to accelerate the rate of interconnection and surpass 10,000 adjacent networks by year’s end. Cloudflare reached that mark in September 2021, climbing from 8,300 at the start of 2020. The results speak to the performance value of direct connections — in one recent case, a new peering session cut median round-trip end-user latency by 90%.
Why Direct Connections Matter
The Internet is fundamentally a patchwork of independently operated local networks, each designated as an “autonomous system” and identified by an Autonomous System Number (ASN). ASNs function like digital zip codes, mapping to defined regions of IP space. Routing traffic across the Internet means hopping from one ASN to the next until data reaches its destination. Fewer hops generally translate to lower latency and less risk of packet loss.
The average path between any two networks on the Internet involves roughly 5.7 hops for IPv4 and 4.7 for IPv6, according to APNIC data from January 2020.
ASNs are central to BGP, the routing protocol that directs traffic across networks. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) delegates ASN assignment to five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) — AFRINIC, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC, and RIPE — each responsible for its own geographic region.
Cloudflare’s ASN is 13335, one of roughly 70,000 advertised on the Internet. While the long-term goal is to connect to all of them, the team prioritizes networks that offer the greatest gains in reach and proximity to users worldwide.
Not all ASNs are equal in terms of interconnection value. They fall into three classes:
- Transit Only ASNs: networks that solely provide connectivity to other networks and hold no IP addresses of their own. These are rare and often used for internal management purposes.
- Origin Only ASNs: stub networks that don’t provide transit to others — typically home networks connected to a single ISP.
- Mixed ASNs: networks that both own IP address space and provide connectivity to other networks.
Origin Only ASNs | Mixed ASNs | Transit Only ASNs |
|---|---|---|
61,127 | 11,128 | 443 |
Of the 61,127 origin-only ASNs, nearly 43,000 connect to just one ISP. That context makes 10,000 direct connections significant: among networks that interconnect with more than one peer, a substantial share now links directly to Cloudflare.
Cutting Out the Middlemen
Direct network interconnection improves performance in two key ways. It allows traffic to be exchanged locally rather than routed through distant cities, and it sidesteps bottleneck congestion that can occur between intermediary networks.
A recent example with a European network illustrates the impact: establishing a direct peering session reduced median end-user latency from 76ms to 7ms — a 90% improvement.
These on-ramps not only deliver better performance for Cloudflare users but also reduce strain on the broader Internet by avoiding unnecessary detours.
More Work Ahead
As an anycast network, Cloudflare’s performance and resilience scale with its connectivity. Reaching five digits of adjacent networks is a notable step, placing Cloudflare among the top five most connected networks globally by its own estimate. But the competition is ahead: Cloudflare estimates Google connects to 12,000–15,000 networks. A new initiative, Project CatchG, targets that lead.
Network operators interested in peering can contact [email protected] or review Cloudflare’s presence at as13335.peeringdb.com.
