Except that’s exactly how it works. Cloudflare keeps a record and rating of all IPs in the world. This rating determines the speed of response from the server and the number of security checks before traffic is let through to the protected server that is being queried. This rating is based on over 40 different surveyors that track and monitor spam mail sources, botnets, ISPs and data centers, and can flag IPs as bad actors. These records are available online.

My ISP rotates IP addresses to clients every so often and after router restarts. One particular block is locked and throttled to hell. Sometimes, certain webpages stop working altogether for me, as if traffic is blocked. Or response speeds get excruciatingly slow. Every time it is because I have been given an IP in that exact IP block, tracing the hops shows that cloud flare servers are the bottleneck. Checking it on IP trust records confirms they are flagged as bad actors. It’s not my ISP nor their infrastructure, as using a VPN instantaneously restores high speeds and response times, and magically a cloud flare page shows up to check for a human.

I have also checked directly with my ISP and they confirm that there’s absolutely nothing wrong on their end, it is cloudflare servers blocking the traffic to some webpages, nothing they can do about it. They have contacted them and they refuse to provide answers as we are in a country sanctioned by the US, so international commercial relations are hindered with bureaucracy.

The worst part is that I can sort of bypass these problems with a VPN, but non cloudflare VPNs are also throttled and trigger anti bot checks every single time. So there’s no win for me. My ISP’s solution is to keep rotating IPs at random hoping clients spent the least amount of time affected by these issues.