Building an anycast DNS/CDN/WAF

It was 2012 and I was the head of the web department at a local small ad agency. My friend from IRC told me about a company who rented VPS with a dedicated IP and root access for $5 a month. And, it only took 60 seconds to spin one up. This was nuts! I was getting a dedicated IP and root access in under 60 seconds. It usually took Nic Cage that long to boost a car. That same year I discovered a CDN that was fairly new. They had a free plan. Free as in they didn't even ask for a credit card. Unlimited bandwidth? This was nuts! I was still running Linux servers at home to host my websites. I was using Apache with VirtualHost blocks so I could have multiple domains on a single IP address. Now, it was so easy to spin up a new VPS and point this CDN at it, and my imagination was the only limit on what I could build. I never did think of anything cool to build back then. But that's never stopped me from building and learning. I often build things out of frustration or curiosity. And, this…