ROOT as CNAME

blackwidow · **Joined:** 24 Jun 2003 09:59 **Posts:** 10

I'd love it if I could:
a: treat the root of my domain as a CNAME.
and/or
b: not give it a record at all.
right now, from what I can tell, the root is a fixed record that must be an A record. thanks for the help! I love your service.

pipsey · **Joined:** 05 Jun 2003 22:10 **Posts:** 7

You can have it work as a URL redirection - one of the two domains I host here does that actually. As for a CNAME, I am not quite so sure

sam · **Joined:** 21 Nov 2002 12:06 **Posts:** 81

Yep - a root record has to be an A record or a URL record. It cannot be a CNAME per DNS RFCs. If you change the root record to a URL it then points to our IP address and performs URL redirects. The best thing to do is use that as your IP address record and then point the www and other names, if needed, to the root record using CNAME.

You cannot have a CNAME along with any other records - since the root record also has a SOA / NS record you cannot have a CNAME with it. Some services allow this behavior but I wouldn't trust it as their DNS server is not following RFCs.

Does that help?

Sam

blackwidow · **Joined:** 24 Jun 2003 09:59 **Posts:** 10

Thank you Sam! Yes, that makes sense. I wasn't aware of what the DNS RFC's said, but now that I look around I see that no one CNAMEs their root. =) I guess I was corrupted by Dotster. Thanks for the reply and I'll go ahead and point my CNAMEs to my root.

Matt

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ROOT as CNAME