Are there standards for operations of a root DNS server?

Yes. RFC 2010 was written by two root name server operators. Another document, with broader authorship, is due to replace it soon.

I would think that checking and making sure that your zone files are current would be either something you could do once a day or at the minimum write a script to check the serial against the current date and start yelping if it was too far out of date.

That's not in RFC 2010, but it is something that NetSol does, and notifies the operator of any machine who falls behind in the way G currently has. (This is only fair, since NetSol's internet connectivity has been historically weak, and the usual cause of a root server being behind is that NetSol didn't have enough bandwidth to ship COM that day on top of everything else it does.) -- Paul Vixie <vixie@mibh.net> SVP for Internet Services, MFNX M.I.B.H. Inc. is a subsidiary of Metromedia Fiber Network, Inc.