You will probably find that the host is actually in a different domain; for example, if you are in foo.bar.edu and you wish to reach a host called ``mumble'' in the bar.edu domain, you will have to refer to it by the fully-qualified domain name, ``mumble.bar.edu'', instead of just ``mumble''.
Traditionally, this was allowed by BSD BIND resolvers. However
the current version of BIND that ships with FreeBSD
no longer provides default abbreviations for non-fully
qualified domain names other than the domain you are in.
So an unqualified host mumble must either be found
as mumble.foo.bar.edu, or it will be searched for
in the root domain.
This is different from the previous behavior, where the
search continued across mumble.bar.edu, and
mumble.edu. Have a look at RFC 1535 for why this
was considered bad practice, or even a security hole.
As a good workaround, you can place the line
search foo.bar.edu bar.edu
instead of the previous
domain foo.bar.edu
into your /etc/resolv.conf. However, make sure
that the search order does not go beyond the ``boundary
between local and public administration'', as RFC 1535
calls it.