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Domain Name and DC in LDAP

I'm trying to connect Active Directory supporting LDAP with SSL.

But am confused with some terms. Help me to understand in very simple way.

Please correct me

  1. Domain Name or Host Name or DNS: this is the server address or name where the Active Directory service is running.

  2. DC or Domain Component or Domain Controller: this is a folder name within Active Directory. For example If I give DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com", then gp is folder inside google and google is inside com folder.

  3. CN=Dev-India,OU=Distribution Groups: CN is a user name which belongs to OU group. And this user will look for something in DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com" folder structure.

  4. Can host name be similar to like top level DC (Folder) name?

  5. What is the difference between DC and AD domain name and host name in LDAP?

Solution
    1. A domain name in general is an internet address that can be resolved through the Domain Name System (DNS), just like stackoverflow.com or example.com. Every Active Directory domain is a domain name just like that.
    2. The acronym "DC" is usually used to refer to a "domain controller". A domain controller is a server, which is assigned the role of being an authority for that Active Directory domain. Every AD domain needs at least one DC, but it can have more than one.

    1. (b) The format DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com is called a "distinguished name". In that context, DC stands for "domain component". gp is not a folder inside google. Each DC component of the distinguished name represents one "domain component" of the domain name. So that example would correspond to a domain called gp.gl.google.com. For a domain called example.com, the distinguished name would be DC=example,DC=com.

    2. If you have a distinguished name of CN=Dev-India,OU=Distribution Groups,DC=gp,DC=gl,DC=google,DC=com, that correspond to an object called Dev-India. It could be a user, group, computer, contact, etc. You cannot tell what type of object it is just by the distinguished name. That Dev-India object is in the Distribution Groups organizational unit (OU) on the domain gp.gl.google.com.

    3. The term "host name" is not often used with Active Directory. But in general, a "host name" is just the computer that is "hosting" the information you are looking for.
    4. I think this was answered by the other questions already.

    Here is some extra reading that might help: