Pros/Cons of using CDN URLs with XF instead of setting up a CNAME & SSL cert for actual domain?

[Kevin]

If I'm using the S3 adapter to have XF use external storage and I'm using Cloudfare distribution pointing to the S3 bucket, are there are pros/cons of just using the CDN's URLs like distroname.cloudfront.net for the externalDataUrl as opposed to taking the next step of setting up a CNAME & SSL cert?

So far everything seems to be working as expected with the install I'm using for testing. Before I go to the next step with the CNAME & cert I'm just kind of wondering if there is actually any benefit to it.

 

[briansol]

A cname just takes the dns another level deeper and points to cloudfront.

I do use cnames registered on cloudflare to point to my cloudfront distro which points to my s3 bucket

 

[Kevin]

I was kinda' curious though if there was an actual benefit to it other than being able to mask the CDN's URL with your own domain.

 

[briansol]

Con:
It can add a DNS hop.

Pro:
It can reduce url size/source code bloat
can maybe help with criss domain lookups