Using Sponge with BungeeCord

BungeeCord is a piece of server proxy software written by md_5 and the SpigotMC team that allows server owners to link Minecraft servers together so that players can jump between servers without having to disconnect and re-connect. BungeeCord is typically used by server networks that offer many game modes.

For more information about BungeeCord, what it is, how to set it up and how it works, have a look at the BungeeCord website. This page will focus on Sponge specific steps.

Warning

In order to connect servers to BungeeCord, you must run the servers in offline mode. In offline mode, without the proper precautions, anyone can log into the server using any name they wish, including those who have admin permissions. Make sure you protect your servers using firewalls. If you are using linux, there is an IPTables guide at SpigotMC Firewall guide, alternatively, some distributions come with UncomplicatedFirewall “ufw”.

If you are not comfortable with tinkering with Linux, or you are unsure as to how to prevent unauthorised access to your servers, consider consulting with someone who has more experience to ensure the security of your server.

Note

Be sure that if you use SSH to make sure port 22 is ALLOWED, otherwise you run a very real risk of locking yourself out of your server!

IP Forwarding

BungeeCord has a mode called IP Forwarding, which allows BungeeCord to pass the player’s UUID and IP address to any connected server, even though the servers are being run in offline mode. With current builds of BungeeCord, IP Forwarding works with SpongeVanilla, whilst IP Forwarding only supports SpongeForge when vanilla clients connect - modded servers that require modded clients cannot natively make use of IP Forwarding with the current version of BungeeCord. SpongeForge is only fully supported with the use of a patched version of BungeeCord, or a community supplied BungeeCord plugin.

A pull request has been supplied to BungeeCord to allow BungeeCord to support SpongeForge natively. We are awaiting it to be included in the main product:

Using BungeeCord without IP Forwarding

While it is recommended that you use IP Forwarding wherever possible. If you do not wish to do so, simply ensure that online-mode is set to false in your server.properties file and add the server details to Bungee’s config.yml file. Bungee will then forward any connections to the server when required. It is a good precaution to set the server-port to something other than 25565.

This will work with all implementations of Sponge, including with mods.

Using BungeeCord with IP Forwarding

If you wish to use IP Forwarding:

  • In the BungeeCord config.yml, set ip_forward to true

  • In Sponge’s config (config/sponge/global.conf), set modules.bungeecord to true and bungeecord.ip-forwarding to true

  • If you have any other server software, consult the documentation for that server.

This must be done for all servers that are connected to the BungeeCord network. Then, just follow the instructions for using BungeeCord without IP Forwarding.