<
networking> (FQDN) The full
name of a system, consisting of
its local
hostname and its
domain name, including a
top-level domain (tld). For example, "venera" is a hostname
and "venera.isi.edu" is an FQDN. An FQDN should be sufficient
to determine a unique
Internet address for any host on the
Internet. This process, called "
name resolution", uses the
Domain Name System (DNS).
With the explosion of interest in the
Internet following the
advent of the
World-Wide Web,
domain names (especially the
most significant two components, e.g. "sun.com", and
especially in the ".com" tld) have become a valuable part of
many companies' "brand". The allocation of these, overseen by
ICANN, has therefore become highly political and is
performed by a number of different registrars. There are
different registries for the different tlds.
A final dot on the end of a FQDN can be used to tell the DNS
that the
name is
fully qualified and so needs no extra
suffixes added, but it is not required.
See also
network, the,
network address.
(2005-06-09)