What is a Canonical Name (CNAME) record?
A CNAME is simply an alias for a host record. CNAMEs allow you to have more than one DNS name for a host record. CNAME records point back to the A record. So if you change your IP address in your A record, all your CNAME records will automatically follow the new IP of the A record. The alternative solution is to have multiple A records, but then you would have multiple places to change the IP address which increases the chances of error. Using CNAMEs is just more efficient. The most common CNAMEs are www and ftp.
