Inspect Cloudflare Range behavior before blaming a full response on failed video seeking

Conditional headers and decompression can turn a requested range into a valid complete response.

Source facts

Cloudflare documents 206 responses for successful supported byte ranges and 416 for unsatisfiable ranges. If-None-Match and If-Modified-Since take precedence over Range. A mismatching If-Range uses the complete-response path, and decompression of a complete encoded response can cause Range to be ignored. Origin range fetches can also use larger cache-aligned blocks than the client requested.

Source: Cloudflare — Range request behavior.

Applicability

This concerns Cloudflare HTTP range behavior.

DSE recommendation

DSE recommends capturing request method, range syntax, validators, content encoding, and returned status together. Compare the client’s requested bytes with what the edge sends and what the origin sees rather than assuming they are identical. Use a known immutable test file before diagnosing a complex player. Keep download authorization and cache eligibility under review so a performance experiment does not expose private media. Keep one test matrix row for each validator and encoding combination rather than comparing unrelated downloads. Ask the media owner to specify the seek or resume action that must succeed. Investigate body correctness and user behavior even when the returned status is permitted by the documented range path.

Verification

Run approved tests for a valid range, an unsatisfiable range, and matching and mismatching validators. Check Content-Range, body length, and full-file behavior, then repeat with the actual encoding path. Confirm the player completes its intended seek operation and document valid complete-response cases separately from genuine delivery failures.

Official reference

Cloudflare — Range request behavior. Reviewed October 20, 2026.