Bridge addresses and ports

A free address looks like name.play.fadehost.net: the name is a word pair we pick, such as quiet-fox, and it stays yours while you use the address. On Bridge Pro you choose the name, you can put it on one of our Minecraft domains instead of play.fadehost.net, and you can point your own domain at it. Below, name.play.fadehost.net stands for whichever address the panel shows you; an address on another domain works the same way.

What each kind of player types

Java needs no port because every address gets an SRV record, _minecraft._tcp.name.play.fadehost.net on whichever domain the address sits on, pointing at the relay port behind the name. The Minecraft client reads it and connects to the right port on its own. Older launchers and some server list sites ignore SRV records; the panel shows the address with its port for those.

Bedrock has no SRV record in the client, so the port goes in the Port box of the Add Server form. Where the relay has a spare address, your Bedrock port is the standard 19132 and the box can stay as it is. A Bedrock player also needs a server that speaks Bedrock on the other end: Geyser on a Java server, or a Bedrock world.

The ports on an address

An address carries a fixed number of ports: two on the free tier, eight on Bridge Pro. A port row has a local side, the port on your own machine, and a public side on the relay, which we hand out.

The first two are set up for you:

Change the local port if your server listens somewhere else, or swap a row for another game.

The plugin and the mod set the local Java port by themselves, so with either of those there is nothing to edit here:

• The plugin passes the server’s own server-port, and reads Geyser’s port for the Bedrock row while bedrock-port is auto in its config.yml. Set a number there to fix the Bedrock port by hand, or off to leave Bedrock out.
• The mod on a client passes the LAN port Minecraft picked, which is a different one every time a world is opened to LAN. Nothing to set, and nothing to re-set next session.
• The mod on a Fabric, NeoForge or Forge server passes the port the server is listening on, which it reads from server.properties through the server itself.

Game presets

Adding a port asks which game it is for and fills in the rest, so the numbers are never typed from memory:

A game that is not on the list is a plain TCP or UDP row with the port your server uses. UDP matters here: Bedrock, Valheim, Palworld, Factorio and voice chat are all UDP, and the relay carries it the same way it carries TCP.

Two ports go further than it sounds. Java and Bedrock on one name is two rows. Java plus Simple Voice Chat is two rows. Valheim on its own is two, because it wants 2456 and 2457.

Ports we refuse

Mail, web and remote desktop ports are not carried: 25, 465 and 587, 80 and 443, 3389, and a handful of others that attract abuse. The panel says so when you try. Bridge is for game servers and the services around them; a bridged machine is not a web host. The terms have the rest.

Regions

An address lives on one relay, picked when it is created:

Pick the one nearest your own machine, not the one nearest your friends: the long leg of the trip is the one between the relay and you. Players then reach the relay over the network we pay for rather than over your home connection.

A FadeHost domain, on Pro

On Bridge Pro the New address and Rename dialogs offer the same domains a hosted server’s subdomain comes from: shulker.xyz, elytra.xyz, bungee.network, fmc.pw and primedtnt.com. Pick one when you create the address and it starts life as frost.shulker.xyz. Pick one for an address you already have and it moves there from frost.play.fadehost.net: the records move within a few minutes, and the panel shows the old address until the new one answers.

The play.fadehost.net address a moved tunnel had keeps answering after the move, pointed at the same relay and the same port, so friends who already have it are not cut off. The panel lists it under the address as “Also reachable at”. An address created on one of our domains has no such second name.

A name is one address per domain. frost.shulker.xyz is free to take while somebody else holds frost.play.fadehost.net, and a name a hosted server already answers on is not handed out, in either direction. If the world later moves onto a FadeHost server, the same name on the same domain can go with it, so nobody has to learn a new address.

Moving back to play.fadehost.net under the old name makes that the address again.

Your own domain, on Pro

On Bridge Pro you can put a name of your own in front of an address, play.yourdomain.com for example. Add a CNAME at your DNS provider pointing at your Bridge address, whichever domain it is on, then add the domain to the address in the panel:

play   CNAME   name.play.fadehost.net.

Java players then type play.yourdomain.com and get the port from the SRV record we publish for the address. For a port other than the default, give players the address with its port, or publish your own SRV record next to the CNAME. Hosted servers use the same flow, written up under custom domains.

What stays the same

The name does not change when your machine reboots, when your home IP changes, or when you reinstall the program. It changes when you rename it or move it to another domain on Pro, and after a move to one of our domains the play.fadehost.net address keeps answering as well. A free address is released after 30 days with nobody connecting. See limits.