Naked domain does not work while sub-domain works - Google App Engine

Question

To be able to use a custom domain with my GAE application, I've contacted with my DNS provider and made them add to add 4 A and 4 AAAA records as described in https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/domain. I also made them add a CNAME record for directing the www sub-domain, the current state of the DNS configuration can be seen in http://intodns.com/suatgonul.com and in http://www.tcpiputils.com/browse/domain/suatgonul.com.

The problem, now, is that while www.customdomain.com works, customdomain.com does not work. Could it be related with DNS propagation latency? I tried Tor Browser and there customdomain.com also works. I'm not sure what to understand from this.

Furthermore, here, https://cloud.google.com/appengine/kb/general#naked_domain, it says that "Naked domains are not supported if you are serving your App Engine app through Google Apps". However, I'm not sure whether I'm using Google Apps to serve my app. I just used Google Plugin for Eclipse.

So, my question is: Is there any other thing that I should to configure naked domain for Google App Engine?

Answer 1

Things changed since this question was asked, custom naked domains are now supported directly by GAE, without the need of Google Apps. See How to use Google app engine with my own naked domain (not subdomain)?

Answer 2

As documentation states you don't have to use Google Apps as you are using http (not https). I think you should play with wildcards for subdomain mapping. Try with "*" as described here [1].

Finally, remember that it may take up to 24 hours for DNS changes to take effect.

[1] https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/domain#more_about_wildcard_subdomain_mapping

Answer 3

TL;DR is bolded.

In essence, you need to somehow direct the "naked subdomain", or the apex domain, to the same location as the www. subdomain.

In the bad old days, you would do that with an A-name record in your DNS zonefile, pointing to your individual server's IP address. If they reached the apex domain, they'd be sent to the same location as www. (assuming www. also went to your server's IP, of course), although their browser would still only show domain.com/etc....

This doesn't scale well, unfortunately, when you don't have a static IP to map to. When we're dealing with cloud hosting, like App Engine, instances inside the data center are responsible for software-defined networking that does funky things with DNS behind the abstraction of that ghs.googlehosted.com CNAME record you used to map requests on your domain through an existing Google Apps domain resolution/hosting service that points to your App Engine instances.

In the documentation related to Apps domains, you can find instructions on how to map your naked subdomain to www (or any other subdomain), and it simply works. No static IP needed.

You can read a bit more about naked subdomains and how some DNS providers are offering record-types in zonefiles that will allow you to route the apex domain to a subdomain right in the host resolution phase of a connection in this SO answer.