[dns-operations] Why are cnames called "canonical" names?

[Paul Vixie]

Fred Morris wrote:
> You may be theoretically correct, but...
>
> On Fri, 10 Apr 2015, Mark Andrews wrote:
>> [...]
>> The LHS is the alias.
>> The RHS is the canonical name.
>>
>> Think of CNAME as "the canonical name of this alias is ..."
>
> Let's see how this works in practice:
>
> I have a server www.example.com. That's it's real (canonical) name. Cool.
>
> I'll give it an address. A nice, shiny A record.
>
> But gee, people keep going to example.com instead of www.example.com. I'd
> better create a CNAME which says "if you're visiting example.com, you
> really should be going to www.example.com".
>
>
>
> But I can't do that.

i suggest that the web people should have looked harder at SRV ten years
ago; we could be done by now.

meanwhile, run the service on example.com, and make www.example.com a
CNAME to that.

-- 
Paul Vixie