Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig VIA.NET. NS
Answer
via.net. 4 NS ns.via.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns.via.net. 4 A 209.81.9.1
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0