Announcing Cloudflare OHTTP Gateway

Cloudflare has introduced the Cloudflare OHTTP Gateway, a service designed to help developers integrate privacy into their applications by enabling OHTTP traffic with minimal configuration. OHTTP, an IETF standard, allows app backends to receive HTTP requests without seeing user IP addresses, thereby enhancing user privacy. The new Gateway is a paid add-on to Cloudflare zones, accessible via a form on their website.

The initiative aims to simplify the adoption of privacy-enhancing protocols like OHTTP, which currently require complex setup and operation. Cloudflare's existing OHTTP Relay, known as Privacy Gateway, provides an option for customers to protect their servers behind Cloudflare while still benefiting from OHTTP's privacy features.

However, this model is not suitable for all customers, such as those already securing their servers with Cloudflare and needing an OHTTP gateway for their apps. To address this, Cloudflare is launching a closed beta for its self-serve Cloudflare OHTTP Gateway. The Gateway, which operates on every server in Cloudflare's global edge network, is designed to minimize latency and offer a seamless experience for developers.

By separating the relay and gateway functions, Cloudflare ensures that no single entity sees both client identifiers and request contents, maintaining the integrity of OHTTP's privacy model. This development reflects Cloudflare's commitment to expanding accessible, usable privacy infrastructure across the Internet, catering to the growing demand from developers to integrate network privacy into their applications.