CNAMEs and subdomains

[Scott Bertilson]

  Wondering about this issue because we have
lots of entries in our top level domain like:

$ORIGIN umn.edu
www.altdept		IN CNAME	www.dept.umn.edu.

$ORIGIN dept.umn.edu
@			IN	SOA	ns.nts.umn.edu. hostmaster.nts.umn.edu. (
				1000113143 50400 3600 604800 50400 )
www			IN A		192.168.0.1

We'd like to provide the perception of a subdomain
("altdept") without actually having to create one.
Barry Margolin sent a note which seemed to imply
that this was legit:

> There's no problem with having sub as a CNAME.  It's a subdomain, but it's
> *not* a subzone, so it doesn't violate the rule against CNAME and other
> data.  We do this extensively for the domain that contains all our routers;

His verbiage seems to imply that what we've done is
OK, but his example was different from ours.

Are we able to do this?  If so, can someone give me a reference
to where this is in the RFCs?
					Thanks, Scott