Fully qualified domain name
<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.
See also
network, the,
network address.
