Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig va.frontiernet.net. NS
Answer
va.frontiernet.net. 5 NS auth.roch.ny.frontiernet.net.
va.frontiernet.net. 5 NS auth.frontiernet.net.
va.frontiernet.net. 5 NS auth.dlls.pa.frontiernet.net.
va.frontiernet.net. 5 NS auth.lkvl.mn.frontiernet.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
auth.roch.ny.frontiernet.net. 5 A 50.48.212.201
auth.frontiernet.net. 5 A 74.40.74.20
auth.roch.ny.frontiernet.net. 5 AAAA 2001:1960:20:1030:400:0:0:201
auth.frontiernet.net. 5 AAAA 2001:1960:0:0:0:0:0:20
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0