How to setup DNS to work without the "www" on shared hosting?

Simon Waters Simon at wretched.demon.co.uk
Thu Jan 10 17:37:37 UTC 2002


William Stacey wrote:
> 
> >  Simon 'CNAMEs are evil (usually)' Waters
> Why don't they change "CNAME" to "ALIAS", seems that would make more sense.

CNAME is short for "canonical name".

Kate CNAME Bob

Means Kate's canonical name is Bob (Kate's real name is Bob).

The original DNS types all refer to the RHS, so an A is followed
by an Address, NS is followed by name server.

So rather than "ALIAS" perhaps "REALNAME" or "ISREALLY" would
have been more obvious, as the real name comes on the right hand
side. "ALIAS" would imply the RHS is an alias for the left hand
side, which it clearly isn't, in fact precisely the opposite is
true.

The mistake is to use a word that isn't common knowledge (or do
Americans use canonical all the time?), the same can be said of
"catenate" and UNIX, or niggardly and political correctness. I
had to look up canonical in the dictionary first time I came
across DNS, don't let my English teacher know.

 Apologies to Black Adder fans.

 Eschew Obfuscation Waters

"Thou shalt not multiply entities needlessly!" Occam on domain
names(?)


More information about the bind-users mailing list