A CNAME (Canonical Name) record is a name that refers to another name. Technically, this can be called an alias – the same address is accessible through several names.
A more common use is related to the outdated website name www.domainname.ee. WWW is actually a subdomain of domainname.ee. In order for a web site starting with www to be accessible, a CNAME record is established which indicates that www.domainname.ee points to domainname.ee, which in turn has an A record with the IP address of the web server. It doesn’t matter whether a website visitor is looking for the address www.domainname.ee or domainname.ee, in both cases they end up on your site.
A CNAME record must always be in the form of a hostname and cannot be an IP address.
A CNAME record is recommended when multiple different hosts are pointing to the same IP address. Different services can run on the same server, such as a web server and an FTP server. In this case, the CNAME record created for FTP points from ftp.domainname.eu to domainname.eu.
If the server’s IP address needs to change, it is sufficient to change the IP address of the A record; it is not necessary to change the CNAME records.
The left part of the CNAME record, that is, the hostname, must be unique!
There must not be another record with the same name, even if it is not a CNAME.
Therefore, a CNAME record cannot be added to the name domainname.eu (second-level domain), since a name server record with that name always exists.
If the third party guide says to add a CNAME record with @name/host, omit the @ sign and just add the destination hostname.
The @ symbol is the root or apex symbol.
The meaning of the @ symbol is specified in RFC 1035:
@ A free standing @ is used to denote the current origin.
When changing DNS records for a second-level domain such as example.com, example.com is Zone apex, so @ stands for example.com.
If the DNS records for the subdomain foobar.example.com are changed, the @ sign will be equal to foobar.example.com.
Because the host of the root record already exists in the form of changing Zone DNS records, you must leave the Host text box blank for @.
ANAME – Alias name
If in order to use a web service you need to contact the server of your domain name service provider and only the (sub)domain provided by the service provider is suitable for this, a combination of CNAME and URL can be used for this purpose.
This domain name forwarding is also known as Alias name, abbreviated as ANAME.
If in order to use a web service you need to contact the server of your domain name.ee service provider and only the (sub)domain provided by the service provider is suitable for this, a combination of CNAME and URL can be used for this purpose.
This domain name forwarding is also known as Alias name, abbreviated as ANAME.
Example: Add a following CNAME record
and to access the domain provided by the service provider through a second-level domain, add a following URL record.
Additional information: Redirecting domain using URL records