ANAME Record and How to Set It in The ArvanCloud User Panel

ANAME record can be considered a combination of CNAME and A records. This record functions similarly to the CNAME record, allowing one domain to point to another. The difference is that the CNAME record maps only one domain to another, but the ANAME record maps one domain directly to the IP address of another. Also, you cannot use the CNAME record to map the root address to another address, which is possible with the ANAME record.

Checking an Example of How a CNAME Record Works

Using the CNAME record, any DNS Record in the domain (except Root), such as www.example.com, can be mapped to another DNS name, such as a.example.com. If the user enters the address www.example.com in his browser, he will receive his response from a.example.com. Using this record results in at least one additional DNS lookup. To better understand this issue, consider the following steps:

1. The user enters the address example.com in his browser, and the browser sends a request to access this address to the Recursive Resolver. Recursive Resolver means the DNS server specified by the ISP for the user or any other DNS server aware of other DNS servers that can respond to this request.
2. The Recursive Resolver, seeing this address, sends a request for the .com domain to the Root Name Server. Root Name Servers are the holders of DNS information related to Top Level Domains (TLDs). TLDs also mean domains like .org or .com and
3. In response to this received request, the Root Name Server sends the IP address corresponding to the .com TLD to the Recursive Resolver.
4. The recursive Resolver sends a request to access com for the TLD from which it received the IP address. TLDs are the owners of the DNS information of their subdomains (for example, here, .com is the owner of the example information).
5. Upon receiving this request, TLD sends the corresponding IP address of com to the Recursive Resolver.
6. In the next step, the Recursive Resolver sends a request to com to get the IP address of the www.example.com record.
7. com will send a.example.com record in response to this incoming request.
8. The browser receives this response, and after saving it in its cache, it goes through the above steps again to obtain the IP address of example.com.

Although each of these steps only takes a few milliseconds, they can still significantly delay the end user’s access to the website content.

Using the ANAME record, the same steps described above are followed, except that in step 6 of the above steps, example.com immediately sends its IP address to the browser instead of the a.example.com record. Eliminating these extra steps reduces the delay in the end audience accessing the content.

Setting ANAME Record in The ArvanCloud User Panel

To define an ANAME record in the ArvanCloud user panel, go to the CDN section, manage records, and in the DNS settings section, set the record type to ANAME. Then, in the title section, enter the record you want to map to another domain, and in the value section, enter the name of the domain to which this mapping should be done.