.root

{{refimprove|date=March 2012}}

root is the name of a database record of the root zone in the Domain Name System of the Internet that was occasionally used as a diagnostic marker. Its presence demonstrated the root zone was not truncated upon loading by a root nameserver.

According to technical observers the single .root entry was replaced in 2006 with just vrsn-end-of-zone-marker-dummy-record, to be reintroduced later in 2006 in its original form.{{Citation needed|date=July 2010}} The entry was deleted again during the preparations for the deployment of DNSSEC at the root zone in 2010.{{cite mailing list|url=https://lists.dns-oarc.net/pipermail/dns-operations/2010-May/005504.html|title=plenus no more|date=2010-05-05|access-date=2010-05-05|mailing-list=dns-operations|last=Arends|first=Roy}}{{cite news|title=DNSSEC on all root servers|newspaper=The H|date=2010-05-06|url=http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/DNSSEC-on-all-root-servers-994744.html|access-date=2010-05-07|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100509043922/http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/DNSSEC-on-all-root-servers-994744.html|archive-date=2010-05-09|url-status=dead}}

The existence of the record was observed with the domain information groper (dig) utility by querying for a TXT Record for the domain name:

:dig vrsn-end-of-zone-marker-dummy-record.root

This entry returned the word "plenus", which is Latin for full or complete.