A question mark indicates the beginning of a query string ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_string ). Basically most web servers ignore it and anything that comes after it if they're not expecting to process any query parameters, with one useful bonus. Query string parameters unique-ify the request, so that any intermediate address caching doesn't interfere with getting the latest version of the URL content if you append something like: "?" + Math.random() to any file fetch requests. It doesn't really matter what comes after the question mark. If it's different than a previous request, it will almost always bypass any caching layers.

(fwiw, the cdn has finally resolved itself and the page now loads for me too)