Running a self-hosted Satisfactory dedicated server is genuinely fun \u2014 until someone decides to ruin the party with a UDP flood attack. Suddenly your factory grinds to a halt, your friends get kicked, and you’re staring at a terminal wondering what just happened.<\/p>\n
The good news? You can layer multiple defenses together to make your server dramatically more resilient. Let’s walk through a practical approach using tc-tbf traffic shaping, nftables rate limiting, and upstream BGP scrubbing via Combahton.<\/p>\n
Satisfactory uses UDP for its game traffic, which is fast but stateless \u2014 meaning there’s no handshake to verify where packets are coming from. Attackers exploit this by flooding your server with junk UDP packets, exhausting your bandwidth or CPU before real players ever connect.<\/p>\n
Spike-based attacks are especially nasty. Instead of a steady stream, they hit in short, violent bursts designed to overwhelm your server before any automated mitigation even wakes up.<\/p>\n
The Token Bucket Filter (TBF) in Linux’s For a Satisfactory server, you’d typically apply TBF on your network interface to smooth out incoming UDP traffic. This won’t stop a massive flood entirely, but it protects your CPU and application layer from being instantly overwhelmed.<\/p>\n Start conservative with your burst size. Too large and you negate the protection; too small and legitimate players experience lag. Monitor real traffic patterns for a few days before tuning.<\/p>\n Once traffic hits your server, nftables is your next line of defense. You can write rules that drop UDP packets exceeding a defined rate per source IP \u2014 effectively throttling or blocking abusive senders without touching legitimate game clients.<\/p>\n A simple nftables rule can limit new UDP connections to your game port to a sane number per second per source address. This is surprisingly effective against amplification and reflection floods where individual source IPs still show up repeatedly.<\/p>\n Always whitelist your own IP and trusted players before enabling aggressive rate limits. Nothing kills a gaming session faster than accidentally blocking your friends.<\/p>\n Both tc-tbf and nftables work on traffic that’s already reached your server. For truly large volumetric attacks, you need mitigation upstream \u2014 before the flood ever hits your pipe.<\/p>\n Combahton offers BGP-announced DDoS scrubbing, meaning attack traffic gets rerouted to their scrubbing centers and cleaned before delivery. This is especially valuable for spike-based UDP floods that can saturate your upstream link in seconds.<\/p>\n If you need help configuring BGP scrubbing, routing policies, or tuning your nftables ruleset, professional DDoS protection consulting is available to walk you through it step by step.<\/p>\n Layering tc-tbf, nftables, and upstream BGP scrubbing gives you defense-in-depth that’s genuinely hard to punch through. Set it up now, while things are calm.<\/p>\n Already under attack and watching your server melt in real time? Don’t wait \u2014 open a support ticket right now and get expert eyes on your situation before your whole session is wiped out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UDP flood attacks can devastate self-hosted Satisfactory servers, but layering tc-tbf traffic shaping, nftables rate limiting, and upstream BGP scrubbing creates a resilient defense. This guide breaks down each layer in plain language so you can protect your game server before the next attack hits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[4,213,437,95],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-servers","tag-ddos-protection","tag-nftables","tag-satisfactory-server","tag-udp-flood"],"views":2,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miraiguard.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miraiguard.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miraiguard.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miraiguard.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miraiguard.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/miraiguard.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miraiguard.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miraiguard.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miraiguard.com\/learn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}tc<\/code> (traffic control) subsystem lets you cap incoming or outgoing traffic rates at the kernel level. Think of it like a bouncer that only lets a certain number of packets through per second, with a small “burst” allowance for legitimate spikes.<\/p>\nQuick Tip<\/h3>\n
Layer 2: nftables Connection Rate Limiting<\/h2>\n
Quick Tip<\/h3>\n
Layer 3: Combahton BGP Scrubbing as Your Upstream Shield<\/h2>\n
Conclusion: Don’t Wait Until You’re Under Attack<\/h2>\n