domain name

The style of identifier that is defined for subtrees in the Internet DNS -- i.e., a sequence of case-insensitive ASCII labels separated by dots (e.g., "bbn.com") -- and also is used in other types of Internet identifiers, such as host names (e.g., "rosslyn.bbn.com"), mailbox names (e.g., "rshirey@bbn.com") and URLs (e.g., "http://www.rosslyn.bbn.com/foo"). (See: domain. Compare: DN.)

Tutorial: The name space of the DNS is a tree structure in which each node and leaf holds records describing a resource. Each node has a label. The domain name of a node is the list of labels on the path from the node to the root of the tree. The labels in a domain name are printed or read left to right, from the most specific (lowest, farthest from the root) to the least specific (highest, closest to the root), but the root's label is the null string. (See: country code.)