In the Domain Name System (DNS) hierarchy, a subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain.[1]

The Domain Name System has a tree structure or hierarchy, with each node on the tree being a domain name. A subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain, the only domain that is not also a subdomain is the root domain.

For example, mail.example.com and calendar.example.com are subdomains of the example.com domain, which in turn is a subdomain of the com top-level domain (TLD).

A "subdomain" expresses relative dependence, not absolute dependence: for example, wikipedia.org comprises a subdomain of the org domain, and en.wikipedia.org comprises a subdomain of the domain wikipedia.org.