Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig qwest.NET. NS
Answer
qwest.NET. 3 NS authns2.qwest.net.
qwest.NET. 3 NS authns1.qwest.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
authns1.qwest.NET. 3 A 63.150.72.4
authns2.qwest.NET. 3 A 208.44.130.120
authns1.qwest.NET. 3 AAAA 2001:428:0:0:0:0:0:5
authns2.qwest.NET. 3 AAAA 2001:428:0:0:0:0:0:6
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0