Cloudflare frees 100TB of memory, shrinks DNS cache records from 953 to 420 bytes
shashib · x · 2026-09-04
Cloudflare detailed optimizations to Big Pineapple, the platform behind its 1.1.1.1 resolver and Gateway DNS: five changes to how records are stored cut per-record memory from 953 bytes to 420 bytes across roughly 250 billion cached entries, freeing about 100TB of memory without adding servers.
A separate project by intern Aashi Patel extends the idea to disk: HTML/JSON/CSS/JS in the CDN cache are compressed before storage and stay compressed while moving between data centers, decompressed only when a visitor requests the page. The prototype shows roughly 3x denser disk usage on eligible files. The author's takeaway: bloated software wastes capacity — making existing machines leaner lets them hold more work and delays buying new ones.
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