A DNS root zone is the top-level DNS zone in a hierarchical namespace using the Domain Name System (DNS) for computers. Most commonly it refers to the root zone of the largest global network, the Internet.
The US Department of Commerce NTIA exercises the ultimate authority over the DNS root zone of the Internet. The zone is managed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) as the operator while a third party is contracted by the NTIA as the root zone maintainer. The IANA operator is ICANN and the root zone maintainer is Verisign, Inc.
A combination of limits in the DNS definition and in certain protocols, namely the practical size of unfragmented User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets, resulted in a limited number of root server addresses that can be accommodated in DNS name query responses. This limit has determined the number of name server installations at (currently) 13 clusters, serving the needs of the entire public Internet worldwide.
Read more about DNS Root Zone: Initialization of DNS Service, Redundancy and Diversity, Management
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