# Smart Shield

Safeguard your origin with just a few clicks.

> Links below point directly to Markdown versions of each page. Any page can also be retrieved as Markdown by sending an `Accept: text/markdown` header to the page's URL without the `index.md` suffix (for example, `curl -H "Accept: text/markdown" https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/`).
>
> For other Cloudflare products, see the [Cloudflare documentation directory](https://developers.cloudflare.com/llms.txt).
>
> Use [Smart Shield llms-full.txt](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/llms-full.txt) for the complete Smart Shield documentation in a single file, intended for offline indexing, bulk vectorization, or large-context models.

## Overview

- [Cloudflare Smart Shield](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/index.md): Use Smart Shield to protect your origin server, improve content availability, and reduce network latency.

## Get started

- [Get started](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/get-started/index.md): Enable Smart Shield and configure origin protection features for your domain.

## concepts

- [Connection reuse](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/concepts/connection-reuse/index.md): How Smart Shield reduces origin connections by packaging multiple requests into one.
- [Network diagram](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/concepts/network-diagram/index.md): Visual overview of Smart Shield features and their role in origin protection.

## configuration

- [Argo Smart Routing](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/argo/index.md): Route traffic through the fastest network paths to reduce latency to your origin.
- [Cache Reserve](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/cache-reserve/index.md): Persist cached content in R2 storage to eliminate cache evictions and origin fetches.
- [Cache Reserve analytics](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/cache-reserve/analytics/index.md): View Cache Reserve storage, read, and write operation metrics.
- [Cache Reserve operations](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/cache-reserve/operations/index.md): How Cache Reserve read, write, and delete operations work with R2 storage.
- [Dedicated CDN Egress IPs](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/dedicated-egress-ips/index.md): Use reserved egress IP addresses for origin allowlisting and increased security.
- [Connection forwarding](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/dedicated-egress-ips/how-it-works/connection-forwarding/index.md): How IPv4 egress traffic is forwarded between Cloudflare data centers.
- [Egress IPs](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/dedicated-egress-ips/how-it-works/egress-ips/index.md): How egress IPs are allocated across IPv4 and IPv6 for your account.
- [IPs utilization](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/dedicated-egress-ips/ips-utilization/index.md): Monitor dedicated egress IP capacity and concurrent connections with GraphQL.
- [Use with other Cloudflare products](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/dedicated-egress-ips/other-products/index.md): Combine Dedicated CDN Egress IPs with Access, CNI, Spectrum, and Workers.
- [Setup](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/dedicated-egress-ips/setup/index.md): Configure Dedicated CDN Egress IPs using the Cloudflare API.
- [Health Checks analytics](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/health-checks/analytics/index.md): Use Health Checks analytics to debug origin availability issues.
- [Manage Health Checks](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/health-checks/setup/index.md): Create, configure, and manage health checks for your origin servers.
- [Zone Lockdown](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/health-checks/zone-lockdown/index.md): Migrate from Zone Lockdown to WAF custom rules for IP-based access control.
- [Regional Tiered Cache](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/regional-tiered-cache/index.md): Limit upper-tier data centers to your preferred region for data locality.
- [Smart Tiered Cache](https://developers.cloudflare.com/smart-shield/configuration/smart-tiered-cache/index.md): Reduce origin requests by serving cached content from upper-tier data centers.