System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (DNS, NIS, and LDAP)

Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs)

A domain name is said to be fully-qualified when the name includes the names of every DNS domain from the local domain on up to “.”, the DNS root domain. Conceptually, the fully qualified domain name indicates the path to the root, as does the absolute path name of a UNIX file. However, fully qualified domain names are read from lowest, on the left, to highest, on the right. Therefore, a fully-qualified domain name has the following syntax.

Diagram shows root domain positioned last in an FQDN when read left to right.

The fully qualified domain names for the ajax domain and its subdomains are:


ajax.com. 
sales.ajax.com. 
test.ajax.com. 
manf.ajax.com.

Note the dot at the furthest right position of each name.