Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig ncren.net. NS
Answer
ncren.net. 5 NS ns-01.mcnc.org.
ncren.net. 5 NS ns-02.mcnc.org.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns-01.mcnc.org. 5 A 152.45.127.1
ns-02.mcnc.org. 5 A 192.101.21.1
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0