What is the 'DNS search path'?

I am pretty comfortable with network concepts, but I've always had this 
hole in my understanding, and want to fill it. In Fedora's Network 
Configuration control panel, there is a field for DNS search path. I 
believe that it defaults to localhost.localdomain, which doesn't seem 
very useful unless running a DNS server on the same box. I understand 
that some ISPs provide the information for this field, but many hosts 
don't offer this info. Is this field the fqdn of the router physically 
provided by the ISP, another router further into the ISP's network, or 
what? Can it be either a fqdn or an ip? I've scoured the net for this, 
and am coming up with nothing.

Thanks for any direction!

Steven Stromer

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