Railgun is a network optimization technology developed by CloudFlare that accelerates the connection between each data center and an origin server so that requests that cannot be served from CloudFlare’s cache are still delivered very fast.
Approximately 66% of requests are static content (such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, and images) that can be delivered from one of CloudFlare’s many data centers located around the world. The cached content is delivered from a data center geographically closest to the client, thus minimizing the latency to deliver the content as quickly as possible.
The other 34% of requests aren’t cacheable because they are dynamic, and must be retrieved from the origin web server. However, even dynamic content changes very slowly.
Railgun uses a technique similar to those used in the compression of high quality videos – by tracking only changes down to the byte and only sending the differences – is able to achieve 99.6% compression ratio for previously uncacheable web objects.
How it Works
When a request is made to a CloudFlare server for a web page that is not in cache CloudFlare makes an HTTP connection to the origin server to request the page. It’s that HTTP connection that Railgun accelerates and secures.
Without Railgun
With Railgun
