canonical name


canonical name

(CNAME) A host's official name as opposed to an alias. Theofficial name is the first hostname listed for its Internet address in the hostname database, /etc/hosts or theNetwork Information Service (NIS) map hosts.byaddr ("hosts"for short). A host with multiple network interfaces may havemore than one Internet address, each with its own canonicalname (and zero or more aliases).

You can find a host's canonical name using nslookup if yousay

set querytype=CNAME

and then type a hostname.

canonical name

The actual name of a resource. For example, a canonical name of a server is its true name rather than an alias. See CNAME record.