New CDN for Media Files

I have decided to move the CDN of media files to BunnyCDN.

This will change the URL for media files being served via CDN from:

https://cf.mastohost.com/v1/AUTH_XXX/YOUR_CONTAINER

to:

https://cdn.masto.host/YOUR_CONTAINER

The old URLs will still work. I will probably redirect them in the future.

If you asked to disable the CDN in the past, it will continue disabled but you can request to enable it using the new CDN. Also, if you use your own Object Storage or CDN, nothing will change.

I have updated the Privacy Policy to reflect this change.

The information above is the most important to your usage. Please let me know if you run into any issues or you notice a significant change on the loading speed of your media files.

If you want to know more details about why this change is happening, continue reading.

What initially was a test to use Cloudflare as a CDN for media files ended up being a 2 year thing, you can read the initial announcement here. But there were always a few problems in the back of my mind with Cloudflare that left me a bit uneasy.

When I first signed up for Cloudflare’s Pro plan I got an email from a Customer Development rep asking if he could help in something. I replied to that email with my doubts about if the usage I intended to do was ok with them and if the Cloudflare’s history with Mastodon Switter could be a problem with my usage.

I never got a reply, so I decided to buy the domain mastohost.com. This would allow me to continue having control on the DNS management of Masto.host and not have them turn off the service from one day to the next. This way if they stopped mastohost.com that would only stop media files from working and I could change that in a couple of hours.

This lack of reply from the Customer rep was the reason I called it a test and not a final change.

I noticed some random situations where Cloudflare would throttle users if they were fetching a larger amount of media files.

Some users could have problems because they were accessing via Tor and end up having to solve a CAPTCHA to access media files, even thought I had security settings at the lowest Cloudflare allows.

Recently I have notice that some Ad Blockers and Privacy browser extensions started blocking CloudFlare and it require users to whitelist my domain.

Without knowing it, all this time I was going against Cloudflare’s Terms of Use. From my reading of the Terms of Use I wasn’t fully sure this was the case. And as I got no reply from the Customer rep I thought that I would test and hear from them if my usage was problematic. Up until today it has been working fine and I never got a word from them. Recently I directly asked someone that works for Cloudflare and signed up for Masto.host and they told me that my usage was against the Terms of Use.

This made me look for alternatives and from my tests back in 2018 BunnyCDN was the best candidate. It still was after looking at what I could find in the market now. Also, I asked some friends on the Fediverse that were using the service and got great feedback. Finally I talked with Dejan from BunnyCDN one more time, since we had initially talked back in 2018, and liked our conversation so much that I decided to go ahead with the change.

From my initial testing for regular Mastodon usage BunnyCDN speeds are pretty much the same as Cloudflare’s even on the Volume tier. Obviously it depends on location but some places they are ahead, so places behind but it’s a small margin. I need to have more data to be sure but I think it will work great.

In terms of cost it will be a higher cost for me to use BunnyCDN but solving the above issues, the peace of mind to know that I can contact directly with the team and that the sneaky big corp shenanigans are not at play there, makes this decision feel good.