I have always used both “root” as in route 66 and “rooter” as in the networking device. The latter has gotten me funny looks often, however I could not bring myself to accept the inconsistency. Today I heard “rowt” used for a path of movement by a radio presenter. Which is correct?
In my local dialect (Toronto, Canada), it is /ruːt/ for a roadway, and /raʊt/ (but that’s very approximate; see Canadian raising ) for the act of specifying a path (and rowter for the computer networking device)