← Back to Forum
3
Proxy
Caddy on VPS vs LocaltoNet for Minecraft server
Already using a LocaltoNet TCP tunnel and it works, but I'm curious if a cheap VPS proxy setup is actually better in practice.
I've got friends connecting fine right now, so this isn't me chasing uptime or anything. I'm mostly wondering if putting a cheap VPS in the middle with Caddy or some other proxy actually makes life easier, or if it just adds one more thing to babysit. Stuff like latency, weird port handling, and whether Minecraft traffic benefits at all from that setup is what I'm trying to figure out.
Comments (6)
A VPS only really helps if you want a fixed IP/domain and control over the public entry point, otherwise for Minecraft it usually just adds an extra network hop and more port plumbing than a straight LocaltoNet TCP tunnel. Caddy also is not the interesting part here unless you're only using it for web stuff, for raw Minecraft TCP you'd still be dealing with a TCP proxy layer separately, so imo it gets more annoying before it gets simpler.
Yeah, that's basically the part I was unsure about, whether the VPS gives me anything except one more TCP layer to manage. I hadn't really thought about Caddy not being the useful bit here for Minecraft specifically, so that helps.
If you've run both, did the VPS setup make port forwarding or SRV/domain stuff noticeably cleaner in day to day use, or was it mostly just extra config to keep straight?
SRV/domain stuff was the only part that got cleaner for me, because I could point play.mydomain.com at the VPS and stop caring if the tunnel endpoint changed, but day to day it was mostly extra config to keep straight. For pure Minecraft traffic the VPS felt like adding another pipe in the level editor, not a power-up, so unless you really want the nicer domain setup I'd stick with the tunnel.
Yeah, same here, the hidden cost was all the little glue config around it. Health checks, systemd units, firewall rules, making sure the proxy comes back clean after reboot, none of it is hard but it is one more mini stack to own.
If you do go VPS, I'd only do it with something MC-aware like Velocity or HAProxy in TCP mode, not Caddy. Did you want the VPS mostly for a nicer hostname, or are you also trying to hide your home IP a bit?
Velocity or HAProxy in TCP mode is the right direction if you do it, but the practical downside nobody mentioned is latency, every player packet takes the home -> VPS -> friend path instead of the shorter direct tunnel route and in Minecraft that shows up as slightly worse hit reg/chunk feel more than you'd expect. So if you're not specifically trying to mask your home IP, I'd honestly keep LocaltoNet.
A cheap VPS only felt worth it for me when I wanted to hide the home IP, because then I could just expose the VPS address and swap whatever was behind it later without telling everyone again. If you dont care about that, I agree with the last reply, for actual play it was just one more moving part and Minecraft is weirdly sensitive to tiny network penalties.
Please log in to post a comment.