Monday, May 4, 2026
[Transparency Report #004][COMMUNITY] Policy Consolidation Hobbyist Identity Reinforcement!
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 plays in the networking sandbox as a hobbyist experimental and research network,
not a service provider. Earlier this week it was brought to our attention that a lot of our
wording and policy language is possibly going to lead to us getting incorrectly categorized
and mislabeled by outside organizations and governing bodies. We want the FurrIX
vIX to be able to function and exist as a learning and experimental place for as long as
we are able to host it. That sometimes means learning from how others view our project
and adjusting our posture and documentation to be clearer about what we are—and
what we are not.
As a result, FurrIX is performing a complete rewrite of our public-facing policies and
associated documentation. This update consolidates previously scattered information,
cleans up various policies and will reinforce our hobbyist status and posture going
forward. We are working to codify what has always been true of our project and its
resulting operations: The FurrIX vIX is a hobbyist-operated, non-commercial research
and experimental network with no coperate structure, no financial activity and no
service guarantees. This rework will strengthen our transparency, clarify our operational
boundaries and remove ambiguity for our members, upstream providers and external
observers.
Why this rework is needed:
As FurrIX grew and matured, especially with the separation from MFN, some of our
operational and governing policies had some issues that could affect us in the long run:
- Some documents implied a level of formality or commercial structure that FurrIX does
not have. We aim to operate in a professional and well‑run manner, but without implying
any commercial or corporate structure- that’s not who or what we are
- Our technical architecture was described across various policies with inconsistent
or incorrect terminology; we’re working to resolve this
- Our legal posturing as a for fun project to learn from was understood internally but
was poorly reflected externally- meaning we need to be direct about what we are
- Logging practices were accurate but not documented in a direct enough manner
- Upstreams, researchers and other similar vIX projects may have a hard time figuring
out what we actually are doing and what we are emulating as a hobbyist project- We
want to make it abundantly clear that we are a hobbyist project focused on learning
and having fun, not a commercial service going onward in our journey
What this means for members of the exchange:
- Our team is working on a new document that will change how we approach the
exchange and its operations going forward, this document will be called “Technical
Architecture and Operational Disclosure” and will help keep us on track and within
our intended scope going forward - All our operational and governing policies will explicitly state that FurrIX vIX is
not a company, not a carrier, not a commercial ISP and not a legal entity going
forward. We are hobbyists who treat our project with the same level of respect,
technical standards, and professional appearance you would expect from a much
larger network—because it’s fun for us to do so and that kind of operation is
something to be proud of on a shoestring budget - The biggest thing is that we are clarifying that our project provides its members
with Layer-3 virtualized routing access and virtual interface termination. Meaning
that the FurrIX vIX is making it fully known that we operate no Layer-1 or Layer-2
gear what so ever. We are purely a virtualized environment - Further refining our Network Management Policy and Operational Framework to
reinforce the ‘looking and acting professional while being community driven’ mindset
and status that we openly embrace
Are exchange operations affected?
Functionally, nothing will change right now. We’ll let you know when and if that happens.
For now:
- No new member requirements
- No unfounded obligations or expectations for the exchange
- No new restrictions on or within the exchange
This reworking of policy and governance is being done to protect the virtual internet
exchange a little better and make our posturing and mission blatantly clear to our
outside observers. The entire aim of this rework is to make things clearer to outside
people who are curious and may be looking in. Think people like researchers, upstreams,
data centers, security folks, other vIX projects and anyone who may have to interact with
us as a non-member of the exchange.
Reaffirming Our Identity
The FurrIX vIX will remain exactly as we have been:
- A hobbyist-operated network for research and experimenting
- Non-commercial and volunteer-run
- Personally funded by its operators
- Not a carrier
- Not an internet service provider
- Not a legal entity
- A project built by a few nerds over several years meant for learning, experimentation
and sharing community
This policy rework does not change our mission. It simply documents it with the clarity,
precision, and professionalism expected of a modern network operator.
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
[Transparency Report #001][UPSTREAM CONTACT][EXT CONTACT] SSL based abuse complaint?
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?
Today at 1610EST, we received notification of an abuse complain from the data
center that FurrIX’s network is hosted within. Upon logging in to their customer
portal, we were greeted with an email to their abuse department specifying a
notice about SSL certs expiring on our primary web host. Oddly enough, this
email list a phone number from another state and a link to the KCPD website.
We are also verifying whether the external contact was legitimate through a bit
of research and external guidance, as we have been told that fusion centers
typically do not issue SSL‑expiry notices and we have not seen this interaction
before.
Honestly, this seems off and like a bogus report, but the FurrIX vIX did respond
with the following information:
- Our SSL certs are manually updated by hand and not automated
- The domain in question has been renewed before the email arrived
because of DoH and DoT requirements
What this means for members of the exchange:
- FurrIX RX’d a fishy looking abuse complaint
- FurrIX is reaching out to our datacenter for assistance
Are exchange operations affected?
At this time, we do not expect our exchange operations to be affected in
any meaningful way and will be keeping an eye on the situation. We will post
updates to this page as we gain more information. Something to keep in the
back of our member’s mind, for clarity, is that SSL certificate expiration is not
considered an abuse category under our network‑operations practice and that
we do run into SSL issues here and there due to the human operator stance
of the vIX. Members do not need to worry about this, we will get certs renewed
ASAP and we have internal alerting just for this.
Report Status: Worked with data center to mark issue as resolved.
[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’