DNS for hosting: A or CNAME?

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From: Bryce Utting (butting_at_ihug.co.nz)
Date: 09/16/04 

Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 00:41:24 +0000 (UTC)

Our company website has just been moved from one provider (Apache,
stable for several years now) to another (IIS 5) to allow a
developer's ASP application to run on it.

The migration left the new site offline for 23 hours. (!!!)

I'm not dealing directly with the webhost (there's a tangled path
there involving the ASP developer), but my role came down to (a)
updating our domain's DNS to point to the new host and (b) trying to
sort out who was responsible for the foulup so I could get them to fix
it.

Long story short, the hosting company kicked off by passing us an odd
request specifying that DNS needed to be by CNAME rather than A. Now,
I know for a fact that Apache doesn't care either way, and I'm at a
loss to see how IIS would know any difference either: TTBOMK *any* web
server simply checks the hostname requested against what it expects to
answer for that IP, and doesn't look into the origins of that name any
further. (Unlike, eg., mail servers, which frequently do rDNS
lookups.) Mind, I don't run a public-facing webserver of any breed,
so I happily accept I could well be wrong there.

Updating DNS to point to them (yes, via CNAME) left us with 23 hours
of "No web site is configured at this address."

I already know for a fact they've been shining us on--after finally
fixing things, they claimed to the developer that:

: ... the customer did not take our advice and use a CNAME, at least I
: can not find any evidence of one. It seems they in fact entered an A
: record for the domain

... even though the zone reads

: www 10800 IN CNAME www.blahblahblah.co.nz.

and dig returns the same.

(that rates about a 7 on my shoot-yourself-in-the-foot scale!)

My question is: *can* IIS tell any difference, or is this simply a
further indication that I should request that the tangled path
terminate with someone who actually knows what they're doing?

thanks,
butting

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