Game servers- Mincraft Battlefield and Others

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tigweld0101

Active Member
Apr 18, 2015
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Here's the background: my niece and nephew are big on games and they want to have their own server. Their mother wants something that can be at home and played only by kids they have over or something that can be played by neighborhood kids.

My initial idea is that I could have a VM that would be in their home, then rsync or replicate to the DC VM.

Here's my question to you guys, has anyone done a similar setup? I know like every kid plays mincraft these days so someone has had to build a server or two for it. I'm also worried about DDoS attacks. Is there a way I can give kids some kind of auth token that lets them see the server? I was almost thinking it'd be cool if you could use a device like a raspberry pi as a VPN gateway. Get one for each kid that you want on the server's home and there's no other way to get to the server except through VPN.

So here's the idea in text diagram for the neighborhood:
Kid 1 PC > Raspberry Pi2 > local LAN router > Internet > colo firewall > game server VM (internal only IP)

Is that making things too complex? Trying to figure out a way to restrict access to LAN/ trusted WAN players (neighborhood kids) and lower attack profile.
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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There are no configuration options to make a minecraft server private and only share the server with people you know, and or password protect acces?
 

tigweld0101

Active Member
Apr 18, 2015
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I'm more worried about a kid spending $3 and ddosing the server which would hurt my colocation setup. I have the bandwidth available for game servers but not for abuse like that. If these kids get the IP of the server and it is 10.5.1.29 or another internal-only IP, then when they take it to a DDoS tool they won't get anywhere. That's my biggest worry and why I'm thinking VPN.
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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I don't understand why you're worried about a DDOS attack for a server you're making for neighborhood kids...

If you're that worried about that situation I would completely avoid doing anything nice for those kids ;0

Sorry, I don't have any ideas for you :D
 

tigweld0101

Active Member
Apr 18, 2015
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I do not trust kids from 9-16 years old in general. I got into lots of trouble that age (and extend out to probably 24 in my case.)
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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LOL @ that age I was running wild on IRC, AOL and other such things we did in the 90s for 'hacking fun'... LOL :D

I can see your point there.
 

Patrick

Administrator
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Dec 21, 2010
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I wonder if someone has already solved this problem. @tigweld0101 it may be worth doing research. If not, this may be a great solution. You may even be able to do P2P VPN automation with pfsense on both ends. Then just use one of the pfsense branded low power boxes as local endpoints.
 

Chuckleb

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Mar 5, 2013
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I think a lot of kids use the Hamachi VPN for gaming, I seem to see that everywhere. Supposed to be pretty easy to set up and you can isolate things.
 
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MiniKnight

Well-Known Member
Mar 30, 2012
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I think a lot of kids use the Hamachi VPN for gaming, I seem to see that everywhere. Supposed to be pretty easy to set up and you can isolate things.
I used Hamachi. It worked great (accessing file shares) but man... security scared the ____ out of me. I'm not even overly security conscious. Some 3rd party no name company broker? If it's Microsoft at least I know what I'm getting.
 

Chuckleb

Moderator
Mar 5, 2013
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Its been brought by Log Me In now, so it is a big company. In has the same thoughts initially... I equated it with warez and malware. Not the case now though it appears.