On Friday, ICANN announced that it had reached an agreement for the management of the F Root Server with the Internet Software Consortium. It might have been a bigger deal had they actually linked a copy of the agreement. I've asked for a copy, and ICANN's press point person on this announcement, Jason Keenan, has kindly offered to hunt it down.

What will be interesting to see when the agreement is posted is what it actually obligates the parties to do, if anything. Keep in mind that reaching agreements with the root server operators is one of the final tasks for ICANN to complete under ICANN's own agreements with the United States. Up until this time, very little progress has been made. The root server operators had little to no incentive to sign up to an agreement with anyone. Because they mirror and publish a copy of contents of the A root server, they need nothing from ICANN to continue doing what they've always done. The only leverage ICANN has over the root server operators is the weight of ICANN's own moral authority, tenuous as that may be, to prevail on the root server operators to do something for the 'good of the Internet.' From the root server operators' perspective, they were here doing their job before ICANN was created and will be around long after ICANN has been dismantled, so why enter an agreement with ICANN? (They might have been far more likely to enter agreements first with each other.)

The first thing I want to see when the agreement is published is whether it actually obligates the parties to do anything. Is this agreement just fancy window-dressing for the U.S. Department of Commerce, so ICANN can report that it is making progress in this area where so little progress has been made in the last 10 years? Or does this agreement actually advance the case of improved service, reliability and security for the root servers? How close is the agreement negotiated to the model root server agreement ICANN published back in 2002? Interesting questions that have to await the actual release of the agreement for answers.