Thursday, May 14, 2026
[Transparency Report #005][OPERATIONS] Name servers moved into FurrIX
What are Transparency Reports?
As a community operated and governed virtual internet exchange, FurrIX has
to maintain and foster open and honest communication with our exchange
members. This means that from time to time, there will be items that come
up during our operations that could or do affect the exchange and our team
will publish notices in order to keep everyone in the know. As a community
internet exchange hobby project, FurrIX aims to have fully open communication
where practical.
What Happened?
FurrIX has completed the planned transition of its hybrid name servers from
MFN’s legacy network and DNS zone into full FurrIX operational control. This fulfills
the February 2026 agreement between MFN and FurrIX to migrate DNS operations while
maintaining continuity for all members. The move consolidates name server governance,
improves operational clarity and aligns DNS identity with the rest of the FurrIX
infrastructure.
We consulted with the operator of the newly scoped MFN project and mutually agreed to
leave their zone and glue records unchanged at the registry for now. Operationally, however,
FurrIX.zone no longer relies on NS entries from the MFN zone and the MFN operator is now
free to manage their DNS zone independently without requiring support from the FurrIX team.
Why this rework is needed:
With FurrIX taking over the network components previously operated under MFN, several
updates were required to maintain a clean governance boundary and preserve FurrIX’s
independent project status:
- Name server identity:
NS1 and NS2 now operate solely under the FurrIX namespace, retiring the hybrid MFN/FurrIX
state used during the transition period. (MFN’s NS entries remain available for their own use.)
- Operational ownership:
FurrIX now maintains full control of NS configuration, monitoring and security posture
completing the handoff from MFN and allowing the vIX to manage these servers as needed
- NS Records:
FurrIX NS glue records have been updated.
What this means for members of the exchange:
- No member impact —
This is a backend operational change and members should not experience any
difference in network behavior.
Are exchange operations affected?
Functionally, nothing member facing has changed.
Monday, April 27, 2026
[Transparency Report #003][OPERATIONS] The start of a WHOIS Server…
What are Transparency Reports?
As a community operated and governed virtual internet exchange, FurrIX has
to maintain and foster open and honest communication with our exchange
members. This means that from time to time, there will be items that come
up during our operations that could or do affect the exchange and our team
will publish notices in order to keep everyone in the know. As a community
internet exchange, FurrIX aims to have fully open communication standards
as best as possible.
What Happened?
As part of FurrIX going forward and rebuilding itself in a better documented and
run exchange, we have been working in the background on getting a simple but
custom WHOIS server up in running in its own isolated space, meaning it has no
access to critical routing gear or management planes in case our custom tooling
has bugs that we are not aware of. This server is to allow our exchange members
and outside network operators to be able to query various bits of information
about our network, domains and services using a brain dead just answer kind of
protocol. It is simple, easy to interface and just works.
At the moment, our WHOIS is running on sample data until we start doing the
actual rebuild of the FurrIX exchange, but it is usable. After the rebuild, the WHOIS
server will contain actual exchange data such as our network information, host
information, router notes, domain information, service info and who is responsible
for that gear and so on. For the WHOIS server, because it faces the public, member
emails will get replaced with a generic FurrIX address. Nickname and PTR will still
be published as is.
Also, while I am here making this post, just for the nitty gritty tech guys to wince
at a bit- the WHOIS server is built on Python using a flat YAML data store. Its
kinda crummy, catches fire sometimes with formatting, but thats all failsafe modules
we built in to the server. Hopefully, with us being a very small vIX, this service
last us for a bit of time to come.
To make a query, use your system terminal and run:
whois -h ns1.marbledfennec.net dwagon and you should hear a response
back from our snarky mascot, Marble. You can also query the domains
rsd.232.gay, marbledfennec.net and furrix.zone.
What this means for members of the exchange:
- Our WHOIS server will be the central authority on information about
our network, domain, service and membership census. If it exist on the
the exchange, it will have an entry in the WHOIS server - When adding entries, our WHOIS server is customized to help our
volunteers by also generating reverse, or PTR, name server zones! - Marble can actually be poked at by our members now, lovely!
Are exchange operations affected?
This is a feature addon, it does not affect core operations.
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
[Transparency Report #002][OPERATIONS] Name and mail server changes!
What are Transparency Reports?
As a community operated and governed virtual internet exchange, FurrIX has
to maintain and foster open and honest communication with our exchange
members. This means that from time to time, there will be items that come
up during our operations that could or do affect the exchange and our team
will publish notices in order to keep everyone in the know. As a community
internet exchange, FurrIX aims to have fully open communication standards
as best as possible.
What Happened?
As part of FurrIX going forward and rebuilding itself in a better documented and
run exchange, there have been parts of the network that we have kept from
Marbled Fennec Networks. The biggest things we have kept are the web, mail
and name servers. But all of these have been needed some reconfiguration to
fully move into our name space and management plane.
We are currently working on making some of the needed changes.
What this means for members of the exchange:
- NS1 and NS2 are in a hybrid state, answer DoH and DoT
on both the marbledfennec.net and furrix.zone domains to
maintain network operations and compatibility - FurrIX can now be emailed without going through Marbled Fennec
Networks. The email server has been reconfigured to service both
domains going forward, as MFN will retain email service
Are exchange operations affected?
This should not have any visible affect on our exchange members. The
network should just keep humming right along all peachy.
Monday, April 20, 2026
[Incident Report #033][DNS] Suspended lookups for ‘look.com’
What Happened?
NS2 has been seeing a low-volume, but constant stream of lookups for
‘look.com’ for the past few days. These lookups are for ANY and are spread
across a handful of IPv4 addresses. Seeing as most lookups only make a
handful of request before the requesting machine has the info it needs,
we are dropping these lookups for a little while because our NOC is treating
it as internet background radiation.
We were seeing the following issues:
- Steady, low rate, constant lookups for ANY against ‘look.com’
What did we do to fix this?
- Temporarily dropping lookup request for ‘look.com’
Saturday, April 18, 2026
[Incident Report #032][DNS] SSL Expiry on NS1 and NS2
What Happened?
Our SSL certs for NS1 and NS2 expired earlier today. Currently our process
for handling the updating of SSL certs is not automated and requires our
team to manually install new certs and then reload the servers one after
the other. Usually this is on our internal calendar and is handled three to
four days before EOL. That didn’t happen this time.
We were seeing the following issues:
- Loss of DNS over HTTPS support
- Loss of DNS over TLS support
What did we do to fix this?
- We pulled new certs and updated the cert store
- We reloaded both name servers to restore service
Everything should be operational and peachy again!