How to allow Minecraft through firewall [3 easy steps]

vahan — Wed, 05 Aug 2020 00:14:11 +0000

Minecraft is one of the most popular video games in the world. It is written in Java programming language and has been released in 2011. Currently, it is ported to various platforms, sold around 200 million copies, and has 126 million active users as of 2020.

In this article, we are going to setup the Minecraft server and discuss the question – “how to allow minecraft through firewall?” by forwarding traffic through a secure tunnel and as a result bypass a firewall or double NAT problems.

We all love to play Minecraft with friends and create crazy worlds together. To achieve this we should have a Minecraft server, but wait should we buy one in the cloud and spend a 100$ per year for this? We definitely have an old laptop or PC which can serve as great hardware for the Minecraft server. First of all, we are going to install the Minecraft server in our hardware, and then we are going to expose our server to our friends?

1. Setup Minecraft server
2. How to allow Minecraft through firewall?
3. Tunnel security options

Setup Minecraft server

Setting up a multiplayer Minecraft server is quite an easy task. By following https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/download/server link you can find the latest version of the Minecraft server and download it to your computer. Before starting the server you should have Java installed on your computer. Nowadays Java comes with all operating systems by default, however, for Windows, you may be required to play with the PATH environmental variable – It is required to make sure that you can use java from the command line.

To start Minecraft server you should run the following command:

 java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar server.jar nogui

The first run may seem exits with some warnings and errors:

[12:33:18] [main/ERROR]: Failed to load properties from file: server.properties
[12:33:18] [main/WARN]: Failed to load eula.txt
[12:33:18] [main/INFO]: You need to agree to the EULA in order to run the server. Go to eula.txt for more info.

However, it is ok! It justs created default configuration file for a server called “server.properties”, another file for end-user license agreement called “eula.txt” and informs us about accepting the license. To accept the license we should open “eula.txt” file and replace “eula=false” statement in the last row with “eula=true” then save the file and close.

Now is the time to run following command again:

 java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar server.jar nogui

In case if you want to start the server with a user interface you can omit “nogui” argument from the command above. The user interface is not showing much, however, you can see memory usage status, players, logs, and chat.

That’s it! We have a functioning Minecraft server installed, now let’s go to the part where we are going to answer the question of “how to allow Minecraft through firewall?”.

How to allow Minecraft through firewall?

By default, the Minecraft server is listening to 25565 port, however it can be verified or changed in the “server.properties” file (see the row “server-port=25565”). To allow our friends to join we should somehow expose this port to the internet to allow incoming TCP connections. We have many options to achieve this such as:

1. Tunneling
2. Port forwarding
3. VPN

Each of these options has their pros and cons. Here you can find a detailed comparison of different methods for exposing a local server. In this article, we are going to use tunneling for exposing the Minecraft server to the internet, since Tunnel In is aimed to create and manage network tunnels. This method is secure and with our platform it is easy to use and elegant way for exposing any local network service to the internet.

First of all, you need to create a free account and set up an agent to your computer. Here is a link on how to install Tunnel In on Windows PC.

That is all you should do in your computer, the rest you should do from Tunnel In’s web portal i.e. it means after installing an agent all configuration can be done remotely.

Now lets create a tunnel and expose local server to the internet. For that just go to the Tunnels tab and click on “+” button in the bottom right corner. Name the tunnel, select your device, select CUSTOM type for the tunnel, and enter the port number (by default it is 25565). Remove two checkboxes from Security Options (see picture below) and click on the “ADD” button.

The system will create and start the tunnel automatically. In the “Connection properties” column, you can see the URL pointing to your local Minecraft server. By clicking on the URL system will copy it to your clipboard. You can use this URL for connecting to your server from anywhere in the world. Send it to your friends and enjoy playing together!

Now when we know how to allow Minecraft through firewall lets speak a little about how to secure our server.

Tunnel security options

While you can use the Minecraft server with your friends it is time to speak about the security options of the tunnel. In the tunnel creation process, we saw the “Security Options” panel which provides a way to limit the connections to tunnel by IP address, time and connections count.

Here are a short descriptions of each option:

1. Connection rate limiting – At most 6 connections are allowed in any 30 seconds window. This is great to stop DDOS attacks on your server
2. Initialization time limiting – After starting the tunnel system gives 180 seconds to establish a connection to the tunnel, once that time expires the system will not accept new connections, however, the connections established within the first 180 seconds will keep working.
3. Automatically close tunnel when not in use – this is self-explanatory. This option will help you to automatically decrease the attack surface on your server. BTW this is one of the reasons we are against port forwarding.
4. Allow Connections From – this option supports 3 different things by now – Allow connections from anywhere, list of IP addresses to allow connection from and the last one is dynamically detecting IP address when you are starting tunnel and allow connection only from your IP address.

Simple steps to install Tunnel In on windows in 3 minutes

vahan — Wed, 03 Jun 2020 23:02:36 +0000

We can install Tunnel In on windows, linux, and mac operating systems. However, in this article, we will focus on installing tunnel in on windows machines.

1. Account Creation

First of all, you need to register an account in Tunnel In platform, so when you’ll install an agent on your machine tunnel in will ask your credentials (email and password) to assign that device to your account, so you can monitor and manage your device remotely from web. It is pretty straight forward with this page:

2. Downloading of Agent

Now when we have an account we can add devices to our account. After logging in, click on + button in the bottom right corner of the screen. It will show a popup window where we can select which version we want to download. Click on the Windows tab and then click on the download button.

3. Install Tunnel In on Windows

After a short time, you’ll have an executable file downloaded on your Windows running PC. Just double click on that file to run it and follow the instructions. It will ask you your email, password, and device name – just fill the same email and password you’ve used to register in Tunnel In portal. For the device name, you are free to type whichever you want – it will be used to register the device with that name in the web portal.

What is Next?

After the above steps, you can refresh the Tunnel In web page and will see a new card representing your new windows machine. On this card, you can see the device status indicator which turns green, yellow, and red depending on your device on/off status and when your device last time answered to the heartbeat of Tunnel In service.

Now you can start to monitor your device through our web portal or even control it.

Once you have configured Remote Desktop Service on your device you can connect to your device remotely from everywhere in the world, despite the fact that RDP works when your device directly accessible. Just you need to click on the RDP button and connect to your device desktop directly from the browser or you can use RDP native client to connect to your device and get full performance and features from the native client.

You can also use your device internet and forward your traffic through your device using Tunnel In’s Proxy feature.

As well as you can expose your local web server and share URL with your colleagues.

How-to – Tunnel In