The Smart Proxy

The Smart Proxy reads the hostname from each Minecraft handshake and passes the connection to the right server. It answers server-list pings itself, with the server’s own MOTD, icon and player count when it’s running, and a clear message when it’s asleep, starting, or stopped.

Listeners

A listener is an address and port the proxy accepts players on, such as 0.0.0.0:25565. Add more on Proxy & routes to accept players on other ports or addresses. Each can send a PROXY protocol header so servers see players’ real addresses; only turn that on for servers configured to expect it, or every connection fails.

Routes

Routes match the address a player typed. The most specific wins:

1. an exact hostname, like play.example.com;
2. a wildcard, like *.example.com (the longest matching suffix);
3. the default route *, for anything else, including connections by IP.

Giving a server a name on one of your domains (when creating it) adds an exact route for that name. A wildcard without a fixed server picks the server whose slug equals the subdomain. Each route card shows how many players are connected through it right now.

Routes can be limited to one listener, and each listener can have its own route for the same hostname: a server with its own port has a * route on that port’s listener, beside the * route for every listener. Within each step above, a route on the listener the player came in on beats one for every listener, then the higher priority wins.

Sleeping servers

Servers set to Sleep when empty (on the Configuration tab) stop after a set number of minutes with nobody online, 10 by default. The proxy keeps answering pings for them (“Sleeping — join to wake”), and the first player to join wakes the server; they’re told to try again in about 30 seconds.

Bans

Bans made in NetherNode, including bans across every server, are enforced by the proxy before a login reaches a server or wakes it.