When designing an Active Directory, you need to be completely clear of what each element or part actually means and how it fits into the overall design. The old saying goes: You can't see the forest because of the trees, and you can apply this to Active Directory as well. It is all about trees and forests and leaves and branches.
The forest, in terms of Active Directory, basically means every domain, organizational unit, and any other object stored within its database. The forest is the absolute top level of your Active Directory infrastructure. Of course, you can have more than one forest in a company, which actually represent security boundaries, and can therefore improve security between different business units or companies belonging to a single organization. The point behind the forest is that you have all your domains and domain tree within your organization contained within it. It is designed so that you can have transitive trust...