Pocket Edition Protocol Documentation

This is the (unofficial) protocol documentation for Minecraft Pocket Edition. The protocol currently uses UDP for communication, different from PC (which uses TCP). The usual UDP issues are still here (lost packets, wrong order, etc.), but the protocol solves a few of those problems using special packet encapsulation, based on TCP. The Minecraft: PE client uses RakNet as its networking library. Even though it uses RakNet, you can still write software without the library.

Currently, the game's default port is 19132. It is recommended to use this when possible because processes such as server discovering will not work otherwise.

Some of this work was sponsored by CubeCraft. Big thanks to them.

Data Types

Minecraft packets use different data types to communicate with each other. The documented ones are listed below:

	Size	Range	Notes
byte	1	-128 to 127
short	2	-32768 to 32767
uint24le	3	0 to 16777216	Little-Endian 24-bit unsigned integer. Commonly used by RakNet for counters.
int	4	-2147483648 to 2147483647
long	8
MAGIC	16	0x00ffff00fefefefefdfdfdfd12345678	always those hex bytes, corresponding to RakNet's default OFFLINE_MESSAGE_DATA_ID
string	unsigned short + string	N/A	Prefixed by a short containing the length of the string in characters. It appears that only the following ASCII characters can be displayed: !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~
address	7	N/A	IP Address and port. First byte is the version (0x04), then come the address bytes and finally an unsigned short for the port.
NBT	N/A	N/A	NBT data in PE is always little-endian. This includes short, int, long, float, double tags and the length headers for arrays, strings and lists.
Item Stack	N/A	N/A	First short is the item ID. If this is not 0, then follows the item count ubyte. If this is also not 0, then follows the item data short and a little-endian short denoting the length of the following NBT data, or 0 for no NBT. Then follows an NBT tag described above of that length.
UUID	16	00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 to ffffffff-ffff-ffff-ffff-ffffffffffff
Position	12	N/A	Three consecutive floats for x, y and z respectively.
Block Position	12	N/A	Three consecutive ints for x, y and z respectively.

Packet format

All packets in Minecraft: Pocket Edition start with their ID, which is an unsigned byte. If you are using a language which does not support unsigned types such as Java, you can do (byte & 0xFF) to get the unsigned version.

RakNet protocol

Connected Ping

Packet ID	Field Name	Field Type	Notes
0x00	Time	long

Unconnected Ping

Packet ID	Field Name	Field Type	Notes
0x01, 0x02	Time	long
	GUID	long

0x02 is only replied to if there are open connections to the server.

Connected Pong

Packet ID	Field Name	Field Type	Notes
0x03	Ping Time	long
	Pong Time	long

Offline Connection Request 1

Packet ID	Field Name	Field Type	Notes
0x05	Magic	MAGIC
	Protocol version	byte	Currently 7
	MTU	mtu-46 zero bytes	The MTU sent in the response appears to be somewhere around the size of this padding + 46 (28 udp overhead, 1 packet id, 16 magic, 1 protocol version)

The client sends these to the target server with ever decreasing MTU until the server responds. This is used to discover the MTU size for the connection.

Offline Connection Response 1

Packet ID	Field Name	Field Type	Notes
0x06	Magic	MAGIC
	Server GUID	long
	MTU	short	see Offline Connection Request 1

Offline Connection Request 2

Packet ID	Field Name	Field Type	Notes
0x07	Magic	MAGIC
	Server Address	address
	MTU	short
	Client GUID	long

Offline Connection Response 2

Packet ID	Field Name	Field Type	Notes
0x08	Magic	MAGIC
	Server GUID	long
	Client Address	address
	MTU	short
	Encryption enabled?	byte	0 for disabled.

Online Connection Request

Packet ID	Field Name	Field Type	Notes
0x09	GUID	long
	Time	long

Online Connection Request Accepted

Packet ID	Field Name	Field Type	Notes
0x10	Client address	address
	System index	short	Unknown what this does. 0 works as a value.
	Internal IDs	10x address	Unknown what these do. 255.255.255.255:19132 for all of them seems to work, any other address will probably work as well.
	Request time	long
	Time	long

Unconnected Pong

Packet ID	Field Name	Field Type	Notes
0x1c	Time	long
	Server GUID	long
	Magic	MAGIC
	Server info	string	MCPE;##Name##;##Protocol Version##;##Client Version##;##Online player count##;##Max player count##;##stamp##;. Protocol version is currently (0.14.1) 46. Client version can be left empty or be something like '0.14.1'. Stamp is unknown what it does (it's some 64-bit integer), 0 works as a value.

Frame Set Packet

Packet ID	Field Name			Field Type	Notes
0x80..0x8d	Frame Set index			uint24le
	Frames	Flags		byte	Top 3 bits are reliability type, fourth bit is 1 when the frame is fragmented and part of a compound.
		Length IN BITS		short	Length of the body in bits.
		Reliable frame index		uint24le	only if reliable
		Sequenced frame index		uint24le	only if sequenced
		Order	Ordered frame index	uint24le	only if ordered
			Order channel	byte
		Fragment	Compound size	int	only if fragmented
			Compound ID	short
			Index	int
		Body	ceil(length/8) bytes

The reliability types are as follows:

ID	Name	Reliable	Ordered	Sequenced
0	unreliable
1	unreliable sequenced		x	x
2	reliable	x
3	reliable ordered	x	x
4	reliable sequenced	x	x	x
5	unreliable (+ ACK receipt)
6	reliable (+ ACK receipt)	x
7	reliable ordered (+ ACK receipt)	x	x

Sequenced implies ordered.

Game Packet

Packet ID	Field Name	Field Type	Notes
0x8e	Body	bytes	Single packet of the GAME protocol.

NACK

Packet ID	Field Name			Field Type	Notes
0xa0	Record count			short
	Record	Is Range?		byte	0 for range, 1 for no range
		No Range	Index	uint24le
		Range	Start Index	uint24le
			End Index	uint24le

ACK

Packet ID	Field Name			Field Type	Notes
0xc0	Record count			short
	Record	Is Range?		byte	0 for range, 1 for no range
		No Range	Index	uint24le
		Range	Start Index	uint24le
			End Index	uint24le

RakNet Reliability

RakNet reliability and ordering is handled on multiple levels.

Frame set reliability

FrameSetPackets carry a unique index. This index may only appear once in a connection (per direction). Getting the same index twice means you have received a duplicate datagram - ignore one.

Upon receiving a frame set, an ACK packet for that frame set is sent back. Since the frame set index is a sequential counter, you can deduce which frame sets are missing, for which a NACK packet is sent. For every received frame set, RakNet sends at most one NACK and one ACK.

Frame sets consist of frames. Internally, raknet uses a "resend queue" (priority heap / priority queue) of frames it needs to send. This queue is ordered by targeted send time. Whenever possible, raknet takes the top few sendable frames from this resend queue and combines them into a frame set smaller than the MTU. It then moves the reliable frames further down the queue by setting their resend time to a bunch of milliseconds in the future. unreliable frames are discarded after being first sent.

When an ACK is received, all frames of the container indices in that ACK packet are removed from the resend queue because they arrived safely on the client and don't need a resend.

When a NACK is received, all frames of the container indices in that NACK packet are moved to the top of the resend queue by setting their targeted resend time to the present or past.

To send a frame, raknet simply adds it to the resend queue with the present as the targeted send time. It is then intermixed with normal resends and other frames for the next frame set packet.

Fragmentation

Some packets (notably chunks) are larger than the MTU. These are split up into a compound. You need to consider the frame and frame set overhead when fragmenting frames. A fragmented frame contains the compound ID (reusable when compound is complete), compound size (in fragments) and index (0 up to compound size exclusive). All fragments of a compound share the same order and sequencing information, if any. All fragmented frames are also reliable.

Order and Sequencing

Some frames are ordered or sequenced. For order and sequencing, there exist order channels. These act independently. Since all sequenced reliability types are also ordered, an order channel is present for every ordered or sequenced frame.

Ordered means that frames with higher order indices are always handled after frames with lower order indices. Higher order index frames are withheld until their lower peers arrive and it's their turn.

Sequenced means that frames with lower sequence indices are never handled after frames with higher sequence indices. Lower sequence index frames are discarded if their higher index frames have already been handled.

Sequenced frames also include an order index. It is unknown how the order index influences handling, and this should be researched at some point.

References

RakNet datagram and message header information: http://jenkinssoftware.com/raknet/manual/systemoverview.html

The latest version of the protocol is not fully documented yet, but all of the packets can be found in the Dragonet server code https://github.com/DragonetMC/Dragonet/tree/master/src/main/java/org/dragonet/net/packet Protocol Version: 23 (MCPE 0.11.0b6)

The older protocol specification(ver <= 0.10.x): There is also an automatically generated specification of many of the packages can be found in the MiNET server code https://github.com/NiclasOlofsson/MiNET/blob/master/src/MiNET/MiNET/Net/MCPE%20Protocol%20Documentation.md

The MiNET wiki also contain development notes around some functionality https://github.com/NiclasOlofsson/MiNET/wiki These will be migrated to this wiki in due time.