The CNAME (Canonical Name) record is used in DNS to create an alias that points to another domain name.
This domain name then resolves to an IP address. For instance, if you have a CNAME record for www.example.com pointing to example.com, accessing www.example.com will direct you to example.com, which will ultimately resolve to the IP address of example.com. This is particularly useful for pointing multiple domain names to the same IP address, allowing easier maintenance and updates. References for this can be found in Cisco's DNS documentation.