Category: Partner Networks

Over the years, Marbled Fennec Networks has grown from a small hobbyist experiment into a surprisingly capable community platform. We’ve hosted projects, game servers, websites and countless experiments — and we’ve had a lot of fun doing it.

But as MFN evolved, so did the complexity of the systems behind it. MFN’s infrastructure has always relied on a deep stack of technologies: Debian Linux, Proxmox, pfSense/OPNsense, routing frameworks, BIND DNS and a lot of behind‑the‑scenes engineering work that most of us on the volunteer team never touched directly because it was outside of our knowledge. We mostly let our network engineer take specifications from us and make them happen- which is showing to have some strain over the years.

The truth to our projects splitting and MFN downsizing is simple:

Only one volunteer at MFN ever had the full technical knowledge required to maintain the networking and a majority of our infrastructure.

The rest of us — the people who now operate MFN — know how to:

• Maintain the WordPress website
• Manage our game servers through our panel
• Keep our small community spaces running for our various passions

But we do not have the background to safely operate the larger network, the routing layer or the virtualization environment that MFN depends on. When our sole infrastructure engineer expressed the need to step back and return to focusing on network engineering — instead of being the only person responsible for two entire projects — we had to make a responsible decision. We chose to reduce MFN’s scope to the parts we can confidently maintain:

• Our website
• Our game servers
• Our community projects
• Our history

Everything else — the network, the routing, the DNS, the infrastructure — was beyond our skillset. Continuing to operate those systems ourselves would have been unsafe, unsustainable and unfair to the community. This is why we asked FurrIX to take over the network layer, to allow our network engineer to pursue their passion and have less overall responsibility- but this change also gives our team the chance to learn how to handle the things we do host on our own. (And Adrian is still more than willing to walk us through things, thankfully!) FurrIX already had the technical foundation, the operational structure and the engineering expertise to safely run the parts of MFN that we could not.

We are simply operating at a scale that matches our abilities — and letting FurrIX handle the network‑engineering responsibilities that none of us were equipped to manage. This was a cooperative decision, made with transparency, respect and months of discussion. It allows MFN to continue existing in a sustainable form and it allows FurrIX to continue the technical legacy that originally grew out of MFN.

Thank you to everyone who has been part of MFN’s journey. We’re still here — just smaller, simpler and truer to our roots.

— The MFN Operators, Ty Dwagon and Riot the Yeen

It is going to take a bit of time to do so, but our volunteers are working on the steps needed to spin FurrIX off into its own project. Doing so will give that project the ability to focus on just networking and being a transit/connectivity provider and will transition MFN into a game services, name server and VPS hosting provider.

FurrIX will be getting its own NMP, TOS and goals as part of this move. That project will be responsible entirely for all of the shared routing gear, network design and transit services. MFN will retain control of the IP allocations but will essentially delegate full network administration to FurrIX for the next two years of operations with some conditions on use and expectations regarding service to Marbled Fennec Networks.

As part of this, Adrian will be giving her position on the board for MFN to Ty Dwagon as they will taking control of Marbled Fennec Networks. Adrian will be moving into a lead position with FurrIX to only handle networking and transit going forward.

So, with Kyru coming back to our volunteer team, our projects are going through some changes. First is that Kyru is stepping up as our Project Organizer. Meaning that he will be controlling the direction that Marbled Fennec Networks is headed, what our policies are and how they are handled, as well as functioning as the chairman of Marbled Fennec Networks for the time being.

Adrian is stepping away from the chairman role and will be moving into running the Network Operations Center for FurrIX. She will no longer be on tier one support except for times when no other volunteer is able to handle tickets, instead focusing more on FurrIX for our IP transit network and services. She will still be in charge of our VRChat presence known as Remains of Avaluix, since the group is private and technically her own to manage, so that won’t change much aside from eventually reworking the digital spaces expectations.

Something that has been tabled but not yet finalized or voted on, is the possible transition from ‘marbledfennec.net’ to ‘avaluix.net’. This was tabled today and our project already holds the domain, but we need a 3/4 vote to push it through.

These changes are being done to allow our volunteers to focus on the areas that they are more familiar with and to make sure no single volunteer is wearing too many hats. This is just the start of restructuring Marbled Fennec Networks and FurrIX, as well as sorting through years of backend things that need fixing.

As you guys can see from the past few post, Kyru is returning to volunteer status as we get ready to switch back into full operation and expand our network.

He will be spending his time on tier one support and in the NOC helping us plan out and deploy our allocations across both of our servers. Also, his project is now a sister project to FurrIX as we have worked out a deal with Project Deco in exchange for his help around here.

One of the big projects involving him is reworking our terms of service, network management policy and acceptable use policy. While the spirit of these documents won’t change much, the language used in them will become cleaner.

I will be taking the time to show him around the IPAM, our routers and teaching him how to manage our name servers as time permits.

Welcome back to the team, Kyru!