stopandwasteutahcom
CNAME records for website have been in place for over a month, but when checking DNS checkers, CNAME is shown not to have propagated
There are no clear steps to be taken. All records in place appear to be correct.
DNS records
DNS records don’t “propagate”. I know the site you linked describes it at such, but that’s a common misunderstanding. Records are written to our edge (which usually takes just a few seconds) and are then immediately available globally. Old records may still be cached for some amount of time (according to the previously configured TTL on the record), but most DNS resolvers tend not to keep anything cached for more than a day (usually less), even if the TTL is larger than that.
In your particular case, you’re looking for a CNAME record at the zone apex (i.e., with the same name as your zone). Such records are always flattened by Cloudflare because a CNAME at the apex would otherwise not be valid in the DNS. Therefore, check for A or AAAA records instead of CNAME on that website. You can read more about CNAME flattening at CNAME flattening · Cloudflare DNS docs.
Ok, so to confirm I am understanding correctly, what you’re saying then is that, in Cloudflare managed DNS records, CNAME records won’t appear in these checkers like dnschecker.org because they are flattened by Cloudflare, and therefore to externally check that DNS records are correctly functioning, the important place to look is whether the A or AAAA records are showing, not the CNAME. Did I get that correctly? This is a unique feature of Cloudflare that doesn’t work the same as with other DNS hosts?
CNAME records won’t appear […] because they are flattened by Cloudflare
Not all CNAME records. Only CNAME records at your zone apex.
This isn’t a Cloudflare limitation; it’s a limitation inherent to the Domain Name System. Cloudflare just allows you to add these apex CNAMEs despite the limitation, by flattening them for you. Other providers may not allow apex CNAMEs at all, or they may allow them but result in a broken setup, or they may provide some other similar feature (e.g., “ALIAS” pseudo-records).
Other than that, you’re correct—you’ll usually want to look for A or AAAA instead when a CNAME is flattened.
Ok, as a non-technical user, terms like “zone apex” don’t mean anything to me.
I’m simply trying to confirm: does the error shown by a checker like this mean there is a problem or not:
If the handling here is not unique to Cloudflare, then it’s unclear why this commonly used checker throws errors for the CNAME in this tool. Additionally, the concept of a “zone apex” would seem to be geographically defined, but the tool is showing errors across all geographies, raising concern that this issue isn’t just at the “zone apex”
All I need to know is whether the errors show are an indication of an actual error, and if so, how to fix the error. If you’re saying there is no error, so long as the A or AAAA records are appearing correctly, then I’ll have to trust you, even though it’s counter intuitive.
I think what’s critical is to give succinct solution-oriented responses, rather than deeply technical responses without clear implications. People writing here just want to solve their problem, not an indepth education in arcane DNS knowledge.
Nope. No issues with that. It’s expected behavior*.
A CNAME for the the naked domain name (apex/root/not a subdomain) has to be converted to an A record. It’s a quirk in how DNS operates, but as long as the hostname resolves to something that ultimately points to your web server, the site will work. So…here’s the A record that the CNAME converted to:
https://dnschecker.org/#A/stopandwasteutah.com
And site is loading just fine.
* Long technical blog post about this behavior:
I defined “zone apex” in my initial response:
If your zone is “example.com”, then a record named “example.com” is “at the zone apex”. Nothing related to geographics.
Like @sdayman said, there isn’t a problem. You just need to look for A/AAAA instead.
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