> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://kb.mochahost.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What is a CNAME?

CNAME-records are domain name aliases. Often computers on the Internet have multiple functions such as web-server, ftp-server, chat-server etc. To mask this, CNAME-records can be used to give a single computer multiple names (aliases).

For example computer "xyz.com" may be both a web-server and an ftp-server, so two CNAME-records are defined: "[www.xyz.com"](http://www.xyz.com") = "xyz.com" and "ftp.xyz.com" = "xyz.com". Sometimes a single server computer hosts many different domain names (take ISPs), and so CNAME-records may be defined such as "[www.abc.com"](http://www.abc.com") = "[www.xyz.com"](http://www.xyz.com").

A CNAME-record should always point to an A-record to avoid circular references.