[dns-operations] Adding CNAME for the root domain issue

[John Levine]

>On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 03:30:22PM -0400, Andrew Boling wrote:
>> The scope of the CNAME record has always been limited to a single label, as
>> it was designed to alias host resources (not define equivalence in the DNS
>> hierarchy).
>
>I'm not sure I buy this account.  It was not designed to define
>equivalence, it's true, but I think it might have been intended to do
>more than alias host records ...

It would be nice to hear from people who were there at the time, but
until then, RFC 1033 says:

   The CNAME record is used for nicknames.  The name associated with the
   RR is the nickname.  The data portion is the official name. 

RFC 1912 says:

   Don't go overboard with CNAMEs.  Use them when renaming hosts, but
   plan to get rid of them (and inform your users).  However CNAMEs are
   useful (and encouraged) for generalized names for servers -- `ftp'
   for your ftp server, `www' for your Web server, `gopher' for your
   Gopher server, `news' for your Usenet news server, etc.

It then describes workarounds for CNAME related bugs in BIND which I hope
have been fixed in the intervening 20 years.

R's,
John