Waterfall's Best Features Over BungeeCord

Waterfall is BungeeCord with extras. Here are the most useful additions you should know about and enable.

waterfall.yml

Waterfall introduces a second config file (alongside BungeeCord's config.yml) called waterfall.yml. This is where most of the Waterfall-specific tuning lives.

Improved throttling

Waterfall has better connection throttling than BungeeCord, which is critical for surviving DDoS or bot floods. Key settings:

• throttle — max connections per IP per second
• throttle_limit — connection burst allowance
• kick_unknown_commands — disconnect players sending invalid commands

Faster packet handling

Waterfall optimizes the packet read path for better performance under load. No config required — it's just faster out of the box.

Better tab list handling

Waterfall fixes several long-standing tab list bugs in BungeeCord. Custom tab list plugins generally work more reliably.

Per-server compression thresholds

You can set a different network compression threshold per backend, which can squeeze better performance out of slower connections.

More plugin API

Waterfall extends the BungeeCord API in a few useful ways for plugin developers — though end users mostly just get the benefit through better plugins.

Settings to enable on a new Waterfall server

Open waterfall.yml and consider:

• throttle: 4000 — limit each IP to one connection per 4 seconds
• throttle_limit: 3 — allow short bursts of up to 3 connections
• kick_unknown_commands: true — kick players probing with invalid commands
• compression_threshold: 256 — compress packets larger than 256 bytes
• player_limit: -1 — no global limit (use per-listener limits in config.yml)

BungeeGuard integration

Waterfall pairs especially well with BungeeGuard, a security plugin that prevents direct connections to backend servers. Install BungeeGuard on both the proxy and backends to lock down your network.

Should you use Velocity instead?

Velocity is even faster than Waterfall and has better security defaults. But Velocity uses a different plugin API and most BungeeCord plugins don't work on it. If you need plugin compatibility, stick with Waterfall. If you're starting fresh, see Waterfall vs Velocity.

Migrating from BungeeCord

It's a literal JAR swap. Your config.yml, plugins, and player data all carry over.