Category: Network

Post dealing with changes to how we route packets and configure our network.

More network changes!

Hey guys,
As some of your probably have pieced together by now, I (Skylar) took back one of my personal domains that MFN was borrowing for about a year. With the fully complete launch of FurrIX, fenfox.run has been pulled out of service from MFN/FurrIX’s routing stack and FurrIX now has their own domain under the name “furrix.zone” that was donated to Marbled Fennec Networks by Skylar W. and Ty Dwagon.

The project has also leased an additional /48 from NoPKT to give our project members and end users a choice of whether they want to use ‘2604:4300:f03’ or ‘2602:f992:f3’ as their subnet space when we connect them to our network. Only catch is that we cannot set PTR records for the /48 that we leased.

We also reconfigured our name servers after not fully understanding how to setup DNSSEC. Everything should now be working as intended on both server for both of our zones. We are also offering to allow project members to make use of our name servers for their own domains. You’ll need to provide our techs with a BIND ready file and they will handle the rest. At the moment, there is no GUI front end for the name servers.

Routing gear is switching namespaces!

For over a year now, our routing gear has been operating under the namespace ‘fenfox.run’, which was borrowed from Skylar to get this project off the ground and running. When it was just her working on things and the project mainly served her, this domain made sense.

But now the project is running pretty well and is serving multiple people for their IPv6 needs and is no longer just some fennec fox’s toy anymore. The project fleshed out and took on a nature of its own, and with that, a rebranding of the gear is due. As of July 31, 2024 the namespace ‘fenfox.run’ will begin being migrated away from and once done, will be released back to Skylar for personal use.

The routing gear will be moved to its new namespace of “FurrIX, a Furry Internet Exchange” along with the domain ‘furrix.zone’. This process should be mostly seamless for project members and end users. Since our routing gear serves more than just us (we provide connectivity to end users in the midwest who need v6 and don’t have it natively, provide connectivity to a mobile weather research guy down in Texas and so on) it makes sense for us to pick a name that describes the gear’s function better and is more inclusive.

As of August 15th, 2024 the domain ‘fenfox.run’ will no longer be in service within Marbled Fennec Networks.

fenfox.run has moved…

This should not affect any end users, but we have moved ‘fenfox.run’ over and into our name servers. This put both of our namespaces within our infrastructure. For the next few hours, end users might see two sets of name servers responding, since it takes time for the older data to age out.

Changes to our routing stack!

We have reached a point where our name servers are working well enough for daily use that we feel like we can cut down on some of the duplicate functionality in our routing stack. At present, each router in our stack is running its own instance of Unbound for client DNS and this leads to a bunch of duplication that is probably not needed and just adds to our hypervisor’s workload.

Starting around 1000EST today, we will be turning off each router’s Unbound instance and will be updating profiles to point their DNS at our two name servers. If you are an end user or project member and you notice that DNS functions stop working, you should update your connection profiles to point their DNS at the following addresses:

  • 204.12.237.197
  • 173.208.212.205
  • 2604:4300:f03:c1::2
  • 2604:4300:a:6e::5

For our WireGuard users, this most likely means replacing the line “DNS = 2604:4300:f03:XX::1, 10.0.XX.1” with the line “DNS = 2604:4300:f03:c1::2, 2604:4300:a:6e::5” to retain DNS functions after today. We know that our DNS changes have been a moving target for our project and our users, but this should wrap things up on that front.