We have had customers ask in the past if the Dispatcher is the same as a CDN. The Answer: no. The Dispatcher is not the same thing as a CDN. Yes, you can use a CDN with your AEM infrastructure. The problem becomes the scenario behind cache invalidation and TTL. It requires some fine tuning, in addition, the understanding that your content cache likely won’t be immediately flushed when you author and publish something in AEM. The team at CodeBay wrote up a good explanation of Akamai, a CDN, and how it can be setup with AEM. If you or your customer is looking to use a CDN then this would be a good introduction.