What is a CNAME?

CNAME-records are domain name aliases.

 

Often computers on the Internet have multiple functions such as web-server, ftp-server, chat-server etc.


To mask this, CNAME-records can be used to give a single computer multiple names (aliases). For example computer "111.com" may be both a web-server and an ftp-server, so two CNAME-records are defined:


"www.111.com" = "111.com" and "ftp.111.com" = "111.com".


Sometimes a single server computer hosts many different domain names (take ISPs), and so CNAME-records may be defined such as "www.222.com" = "www.111.com".


A CNAME-record should always point to an A-record to avoid circular references.


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