Today I had a major life threatening problem. I could not connect to my Minecraft server because the company who manages the internet connection for my workplace had blocked minecraft.net!
So as you could imagine, upon realising this I was instantly hit with depression and sadness… After a few minutes though I became determined to find a way around the problem, and I’m glad I wasted my lunch because I have found a way to connect without using proxies and without doing anything nasty to the company blocking the site.
Firstly…
This guide assumes that the actual server you want to connect to is not blocked i any way and that the only problem you have is minecraft.net is blocked (stopping the session authentication on the server connections screen). If you comment your problems I can perhaps help further with any other issues disabling you from minecraft.
The method?
So just to quickly explain the method I have taken to circumvent my problem.
Basically after logging into minecraft using the desktop software and selecting “connect to server” you are faced with your server list. Clicking in my server would result in a “403 error while connecting to session.minecraft.net”.
My idea was simple, figure out what the response usually is from session.minecraft.net and then redirect the page to my local http server which would just spill out the response minecraft was looking for.
So I went to the url minecraft gave me in a browser (on my home pc) and it returned simply “OK”. So that was easy to replicate. Then all I had to do was put my server into “offline” mode as when I login my username isn’t authenticated and thus my server would kick me out. Once this was setup I was away and I can connect now without any trouble.
Step 1: HTTP Server
The first thing you are going to need to do is install a HTTP server so you can do the response required by Minecraft.
Download EasyPHP and install it on your computer, it is usually installed at C:/Program Files/EasyPHP/ So I will refer to this directory from now on. You will need to make sure the server is configured to run on port 80!
Once installed go to the EasyPHP directory and find /www/ in there create this file (including directory’s) gamejoinserver.jsp.
Open this file in Notepad and type “OK” and click save. Make sure there are no spaces or anything else.
Now make sure your server is running and working by going to: http://localhost/game/joinserver.jsp
When this is working and you see “OK” in your browser you are ready to continue to the next stage.
Step 2: Windows HOSTS file
You will now need to edit the windows hosts file so that any requests to session.minecraft.net actually goes to your localhost webserver instead!
Find your hosts file at this location:
[WinDir]/System32/drivers/etc/hosts/
Open this file in a text editor and add the following line:
127.0.0.1 session.minecraft.net
Click save and now test that it is working by going to Firefox and typing:
http://session.minecraft.net/game/Joinserver.jsp
You should see “OK” which will mean that it is working correctly! If it is please move to the next step.
Step 3: Server Configuration
Your server now needs to allow non-authenticated users onto your server (warning anyone using any username can now access your server as you or as inexistent usernames). All you need to do is edit server.properties and edit the following line:
online-mode = true
To:
online-mode = false
Congratulations!
You have now circumvented your restrictions and can now play on your Minecraft server!! Please comment if this was useful and helped you! 
P.S. This is how I got around SonicWall which had blocked minecraft and I couldn’t play.
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Thanks Deano! Great post. I have almost successfully set up my school minecraft server, however like you have stated, I am having trouble with the user authentification process. I can actually access minecraft.net through my browser, however my minecraft client cannot! No info in the loadup screen and no user auth! Any ideas?
It could be your schools firewall, or the firewall on the PC you are using (or in fact both!). If you can disable the firewall on the pc and try again, if this didn’t fix it or you cannot then I suggest you try my workaround! did you try it?
Can you access this on your browser? http://session.minecraft.net/game/Joinserver.jsp
Failing everything you could try running Minecraft through a program called GPDisable. Used to use this at college to play Unreal Tournament – it has a little more use than getting around network blocks… It’s primarily useful for running exe files on machines with restrictions stopping exe files being run.
just pu localhost in your server ip
That works if you are playing in an off-line server, my guide covers connecting to a server on the internet.
Although I know I’m late to the party, I have one little question I’m wondering if you could help me out with:
After following all of your instructions, both 127.0.0.1/game/joinserver.jsp and session.minecraft.net/game/joinserver.jsp load up with a “could not connect”.
However, session.minecraft.net:8887/game/joinserver.jsp and 127.0.0.1:8887/game/joinserver.jsp work perfectly fine.
Does that strange 8887 mean that I have done something wrong/have something else to do, or should this work perfectly alright as it is now?
Thank you ahead of time if get the chance to reply to this!
Hey Spaceman Jim,
you need to make sure EasyPHP is running on port 80, the following guide might help you but remember your not wishing to change it from port 80 but to port 80.
http://technology.ohmygoh.com/easyphp-how-to-change-apache-server-port/
Perfect, brilliant, that did the trick!
Thank you so much, and especially for the quick reply; I was not expecting that on a four-month-old post!