CODEWITHSUNDEEP
subdomainwildcard-subdomain
Igor K
Igor K

Reputation: 1371

Should I use an A record or a CNAME for a wildcard subdomain?

Some people are saying use an A record and others a CNAME for a catch all subdomain.

Which should I use and why?

Upvotes: 78

Views: 60561

Answers (4)

Aamir
Aamir

Reputation: 16957

I think question is about to understand A & CNAME records deeply. I have also found this confusing but after reading couple of blogs, I came up with following understanding:

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 address. For example, if you want the name blog.myweb.example to point to the server 186.30.11.143 you will configure:

   blog.myweb.example     A        186.30.11.143

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

Let's take our blog as example:

   blog.myweb.example              CNAME   my.bitbucket.example
   my.bitbucket.example            CNAME   github.map.mybitbucket.example
   github.map.mybitbucket.example  A       186.30.11.143

We use GitHub Pages and we set blog.myweb.example as a CNAME of my.bitbucket.example, which in turns is itself a CNAME of github.map.mybitbucket.example, which is an A record pointing to 186.30.11.143. This means that blog.myweb.example resolves to 186.30.11.143.

Conclusion: A record points a name to an IP address. CNAME record can point a name to another CNAME or an A record.

Source: Differences between A & CNAME records

Upvotes: 70

Tandava
Tandava

Reputation: 131

A common use for CNAMEs is to map a subdomain to a host under someone else's control.

In the case of "CNAME" record if they change the IP address you don't need to change your DNS entry. With an "A" record, you would have to update it every time.

An example of this is WordPress subdomain mapping. WordPress allows you to have a blog on something like "blog.mydomain.com", but their blogs are cloud hosted and may dynamically change IP address due to server maintenance, failover, or load-balancing. Using a CNAME means that it still works.

Upvotes: 13

bzuo
bzuo

Reputation: 135

If you have multiple domain that points to the same site:

With A record: every of your domain points to the IP of your site, when your change your server's IP, you will need to update multiple time.

With CNAME: every of your domain points to a CNAME, when your server's IP change, you will only need to update the A record of that CNAME.

If you have a domain that doesn't belongs to you, or you don't have the control of what it will be pointing to, you can only use CNAME.

Upvotes: 5

ceejayoz
ceejayoz

Reputation: 179994

It won't really matter if you CNAME or A record the *.example.com record.

The one benefit to CNAME is that if you change your A record for www.example.com you won't need to change the *.example.com record as well, but that's minimal.

Upvotes: 62

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