2

If I have an address record setup as follows...

www.mywebsite.com  111.1.1.1
*.mywebsite.com    111.1.1.2

and a CNAME setup as follows...

beta.mywebsite.com 111.1.1.3

Would pinging beta.mywebsite.com resolve to 111.1.1.2 or 111.1.1.3? How long does it take to refresh after changing.

2 Answers 2

13

a CNAME must point to an hostname not an IP address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNAME_record

This is still confusing because it doesn't answer the title of the post. It just points out that a CNAME must point to a hostname.

Further, a record with the specific name requested will always override a wildcard or default record.

1
  • Ah! That explains everything :)
    – digiguru
    May 17, 2010 at 10:25
5

You appear to be mixing two things:

  1. As @Irosa says, a CNAME must point to a domain name, not an IP address

  2. With wildcard records, a more specific entry will always override the wildcard entry.

Furthermore, you can't have a CNAME and other resource records at the same name.

5
  • You can have an MX record pointing at the same name as a CNAME record.
    – dunxd
    Sep 7, 2012 at 13:51
  • @dunxd you can, although that used to be considered a configuration failure.
    – Alnitak
    Sep 7, 2012 at 13:53
  • Are you talking about not pointing an MX record at a CNAME record (e.g. mail MX cname; cname CNAME a-record; a-record A 12.12.12.12)? That won't work. But you could have mail MX a-record and cname CNAME a-record - that isn't broken.
    – dunxd
    Sep 10, 2012 at 19:32
  • @dunxd I meant the former, but it is permitted since RFC 2821.
    – Alnitak
    Sep 10, 2012 at 22:48
  • I didn't understand your answer - I thought you meant the latter and was responding to that.
    – dunxd
    Sep 10, 2012 at 23:11

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