3.2 Specific terms

To facilitate more meaningful discussions regarding name resolution, it is important to understand some of the basic terms used in name resolution literature.

• domain name: this is a dot-separated identifier, such as power.arc.losrios.edu, www.yahoo.com and etc.
• host name: a host name is a domain name that resolves to a specific IP address.
• subdomain: a domain name is a subdomain of another domain if the former consists of a symbolic name inserted in front of the latter. For example, arc.losrios.edu is a subdomain of losrios.edu.
• top-level domain: a top level domain is the symbolic name at the rightmost portion of a domain name. For example, the top-level domain of power.arc.losrios.edu is edu, the top-level domain of maps.google.com is com, and so on.