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How to Set Up Velocity for a Minecraft Server Network

A practical, security-first guide to putting Velocity in front of Paper servers, configuring modern forwarding and its shared secret, avoiding BungeeCord conflicts, supporting legacy destinations and fixing common connection errors.
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Use Velocity as the authenticated front door to your Minecraft network, with one or more Paper servers behind it. For current servers running Minecraft 1.13 or newer, the reliable configuration is modern forwarding: Velocity and every Paper backend share the same forwarding secret, backends run with online-mode=false, Spigot/BungeeCord forwarding is disabled, and Paper’s Velocity integration is enabled. Finish by restarting every process and blocking direct public access to backend ports.

How the network should be arranged

Players connect to the Velocity proxy, not directly to a game server. Velocity performs the Mojang/Microsoft session authentication, chooses a destination such as a lobby or survival server, and forwards the authenticated player’s UUID, name, skin properties and connection information to that backend. Paper then accepts the forwarded identity instead of trying to authenticate the player a second time.

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Modern forwarding packages the player data in a binary payload protected by a message-authentication code (MAC). A backend can verify that the payload came from a proxy holding the shared secret, which makes identity spoofing substantially harder than an unauthenticated forwarding format. Modern forwarding is available only for Minecraft 1.13 and newer clients/servers.

Forwarding authenticates data; it does not make a backend port private. If somebody can reach a backend directly, they may bypass the proxy’s access controls or exploit a server that is not intended to be public. Network isolation and firewall rules are therefore part of a complete setup.

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Prerequisites and decisions

  • A Velocity proxy and at least one Paper backend that can communicate over the network.
  • Paper 1.13 or newer if you will use modern forwarding. A mixed network that includes an older backend needs a deliberate per-server forwarding override rather than one format blindly applied to every server.
  • Administrative access to the proxy directory and each backend directory.
  • A plan for listening addresses and firewall rules. The proxy’s public listener should be reachable by players; backend listeners should be reachable only by the proxy and trusted administration systems.
  • A maintenance window: forwarding changes require process restarts, and a configuration reload is not guaranteed to apply them.

Keep the proxy’s online-mode setting in mind before editing Paper. Paper’s Velocity setting must match that value exactly; do not assume that a copied example is correct for every installation.

Configure the Velocity proxy

1. Stop the proxy and back up its configuration

Stop Velocity cleanly, then copy velocity.toml and the proxy directory to a backup location. A backup lets you restore a known-good configuration if a typo prevents startup.

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2. Select modern forwarding

Open velocity.toml and set the forwarding mode to modern:

player-info-forwarding-mode = "modern"

Leave this value as modern when all destinations support modern forwarding. Do not combine it with BungeeCord forwarding on the same backend; the payload formats and verification procedures are different.

3. Check the proxy authentication mode

Find Velocity’s online-mode value in velocity.toml. The Paper backends will use a matching proxies.velocity.online-mode value later. If the proxy authenticates players online, Paper must be told that the proxy is operating in the corresponding mode; a mismatch can cause rejected connections or incorrect identity handling.

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4. Locate the generated forwarding secret

Velocity creates a file named forwarding.secret in its working directory. Open it as plain text and copy its contents exactly. Treat the secret like a password: do not publish it in screenshots, logs, public repositories or chat.

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Whitespace matters. An extra space, a missing character or an added newline can make the backend reject every forwarded connection. Copy the value without changing its characters, and paste it into each backend’s Paper configuration as a single string.

5. Verify destination definitions

Each backend must have an address in the proxy’s server list. Use the backend’s private address and port, not a public address that allows players to bypass the proxy. The exact destination names are up to your network (for example, lobby and survival), but the names used by routing rules, player commands or fallback settings must match the names in velocity.toml.

Configure every Paper backend

Repeat the following procedure on every Paper server that will receive players through Velocity. A setting applied to one backend does not automatically apply to the others.

1. Disable backend authentication

In the backend’s server.properties, set:

online-mode=false

The proxy is now the component that authenticates the player. Leaving a backend in online mode causes it to attempt a second session-server login and commonly produces failed connections or inconsistent identity data.

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2. Disable BungeeCord mode

Open spigot.yml and make sure the following setting is false:

settings:
  bungeecord: false

Do not enable the old BungeeCord forwarding path when Velocity is using modern forwarding. Mixing the two formats is a frequent cause of wrong UUIDs, missing skins and connection errors.

3. Enable Velocity support in Paper’s current global configuration

Current Paper versions use config/paper-global.yml. Under proxies.velocity, enable the integration, paste the exact secret, and set the online-mode value to the same value used by the proxy:

proxies:
  velocity:
    enabled: true
    online-mode: true
    secret: "paste-the-contents-of-forwarding.secret-here"

The sample uses true for online-mode only as an example. Replace it with the value from your own velocity.toml; the two values must match. Keep the secret on one line and preserve its exact characters.

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4. Watch for outdated instructions

Older guides may tell you to edit paper.yml or a velocity-support field. Those paths are not the current Paper layout described above. If your Paper build uses a different configuration structure, follow that build’s documentation rather than inserting obsolete keys into paper-global.yml.

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Restart in the right order

  1. Save and close the backend files, then start or restart each Paper server.
  2. Save velocity.toml and restart Velocity after the backends are configured.
  3. Connect from a normal player account through the proxy’s public address.
  4. Join each destination in turn. Check that the UUID remains stable, the skin appears, and switching servers does not create a new offline identity.
  5. Inspect the proxy and backend logs immediately if a connection fails. The first authentication or forwarding error is usually more useful than later disconnect messages.

Do not rely on a runtime reload for this change. Forwarding settings are read during startup in many deployments, so a full restart is the dependable way to apply them.

Protect the backend ports

Modern forwarding proves that a connection came from a holder of the shared secret, but it does not prevent someone from opening a TCP connection directly to a backend. Use host firewalls, cloud security groups or a private network so that backend ports accept traffic only from the Velocity host (and from explicitly approved administration addresses).

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  • Expose the proxy listener to the Internet; keep backend listeners off the public interface where practical.
  • Allow backend traffic from the proxy’s private IP address or security-group identity.
  • Remove broad “anywhere” rules left over from initial testing.
  • Do not publish forwarding.secret. Rotate it by changing the proxy secret and updating every backend during a maintenance window if you believe it has leaked.
  • Keep operating-system, Java, Velocity and Paper updates on a planned schedule, testing configuration changes on a non-production instance first.
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Supporting mixed-version networks

Modern forwarding is the default choice for a network whose destinations are all compatible with it. Velocity also supports per-server forwarding overrides. In the [servers] configuration, a destination can inherit the global mode (the INHERIT behavior) or use a different forwarding mode when a particular legacy backend requires it.

This is useful for a network that includes an older 1.8-era server alongside modern destinations, but it increases operational risk. Configure the legacy destination and its backend as a matched pair, document which mode it uses, and test that route separately. Never set a modern Paper backend to expect BungeeCord data while the proxy sends modern data, or vice versa.

Because forwarding support and configuration keys vary by software version, verify the exact per-server option in the Velocity and backend documentation for the versions you run. Do not copy a key from an old tutorial simply because the destination is called “legacy.”

Troubleshooting forwarding failures

“This server requires you to connect through Velocity” or a similar proxy-only error

  • Confirm that the proxy uses player-info-forwarding-mode = "modern".
  • Confirm that the backend has proxies.velocity.enabled: true.
  • Compare the backend’s secret character-for-character with forwarding.secret. Check for an accidental space, quotation mark included as part of the value, or line break.
  • Restart both the backend and the proxy after correcting the files.

Players connect but have the wrong UUID or no skin

Check all three forwarding layers together: modern mode in velocity.toml, Velocity enabled with the correct secret in paper-global.yml, and settings.bungeecord: false in spigot.yml. A leftover BungeeCord setting or a backend that was not restarted can make the server interpret the payload incorrectly.

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Every backend rejects players after a migration

Look for a global mismatch rather than troubleshooting one destination at a time. Verify the proxy’s online-mode against each backend’s proxies.velocity.online-mode, verify that every backend has online-mode=false in server.properties, and ensure that all machines received the same secret. Then restart all processes.

Only one destination fails

Compare that server’s files with a working backend. Check its private address in the proxy’s destination list, its local firewall, the Paper path (config/paper-global.yml), and whether a per-server forwarding override is selecting a different format. A single legacy override can be correct for one destination and wrong for another.

The proxy works locally but not for remote players

This is usually a listener, routing or firewall issue rather than a forwarding-secret issue. Confirm that the proxy’s public listener is bound to an externally reachable interface, that the network firewall forwards the intended port to the proxy, and that backend-only firewall rules are not mistakenly blocking the proxy’s private address.

Configuration changes appear to have no effect

Stop the relevant process, verify that you edited the active server directory, save the file, and start it again. Reload commands do not always reload forwarding settings. Read startup logs to confirm the process loaded the edited configuration and did not fall back to a different directory or a malformed file.

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Pre-launch verification checklist

  • Proxy: player-info-forwarding-mode = "modern" for a modern network.
  • Secret: every backend contains the exact contents of the proxy’s forwarding.secret.
  • Paper: proxies.velocity.enabled is true, the online-mode value matches the proxy, and the current path is config/paper-global.yml.
  • Backend authentication: online-mode=false in every backend’s server.properties.
  • BungeeCord: settings.bungeecord: false in every backend’s spigot.yml.
  • Version plan: all modern destinations support 1.13+ forwarding, or legacy destinations have explicit, tested per-server overrides.
  • Network security: backend ports are restricted to the proxy and approved administration sources.
  • Activation: all backends and the proxy were fully restarted, then tested through the proxy from an external player connection.

What a successful test proves

A successful end-to-end test should show that a player can authenticate once at Velocity, enter each permitted backend, retain the same UUID and skin, and cannot reach a backend through an unauthorised direct route. Test both a normal player account and an account with the permissions used for server switching. If direct backend access still works from an untrusted network, forwarding is configured but the network is not yet secured.

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