Differences between the A and CNAME records

The A and CNAME records are the two common ways to map a host name (name hereafter) to one or more IP address. Before going ahead, it’s important that you really understand the differences between these two records. I’ll keep it simple.

The A record points a name to a specific IP. For example, if you want the name blog.dnsimple.com to point to the server 185.31.17.133 you will configure:

blog.dnsimple.com.     A        185.31.17.133

The CNAME record points a name to another name, instead of an IP. The CNAME source represents an alias for the target name and inherits its entire resolution chain.

Let’s take our blog as example:

blog.dnsimple.com.      CNAME   aetrion.github.io.
aetrion.github.io.      CNAME   github.map.fastly.net.
github.map.fastly.net.  A       185.31.17.133

We use GitHub Pages and we set blog.dnsimple.com as a CNAME of aetrion.github.io, which in turns is itself a CNAME of github.map.fastly.net, which is an A record pointing to 185.31.17.133. In short terms, this means that blog.dnsimple.com resolves to 185.31.17.133.

To summarize, an A record points a name to an IP. CNAME record can point a name to another CNAME or an A record.




from: https://support.dnsimple.com/articles/differences-a-cname-records/