Port forwarding over the Internet

Question

I hope I'm on the right website as it is my first question here!!

So here is my situation I have a small server hosted at home behind a DSL line for which I have a static IP. Now I would like to have two different services running on the same port. I cannot apply any kind of source IP filtering as they should both be accessible from anywhere. So basically I think there is no way to do that and the only solution is to run the services on 2 different IP addresses.

In order to do that, I was thinking about using another DSL line for which I have obviously a second public IP. Is there any way to redirect the traffic addressed to a specific port to another machine, but on the Internet, not inside the LAN ???

Ah of course, I was hoping to do that just with the modem/router, without any extra hardware (otherwise it would be too easy, some sort of netcat piping and here we go !!). For those interested the router is a Zyxel P-2602R-D1A (link text)

Any ideas and suggestions welcomed !!!

Thanks

Answer 1

In theory, this will work. You will have to setup a port forwarding from the extra public IP to the original IP. In your case, extraIP:80 to originalIP:81.

I have such a setup with iptables. It was designed to ease migration between to IP different public IP ranges. Basically, the "old" public IP would be NATed to the "new" public IP. The NAT went through the Internet without a problem.

I doubt it will work with you modem/router. It is most likely only able to do port forwarding to IP on it's LAN. The only way to find out is to try to NAT any random public IP and you will see if it works.

I have tried with pfense to do this and have failed. Only IPTables has worked correctly.

Answer 2

You have to do add DNAT rule on the router B. That means that the router B has to support DNAT and be flexible enough to do DNAT on the same interface. If not try to install an alternate firmware like OpenWrt.

Answer 3

Now I would like to have two different services running on the same port

You can't do it that way. Each server program has to be listening on it's own port (you will encounter "can't bind" or "port in use" errors if you have two programs try to open the same port).

If you're talking about hosting two different web sites, that's accomplished by name-based virtual hosting. I.e., one server listens on port 80, but requests for site 1 and site 2 go to different places.

Other than that, you'll need two public IP addresses or you'll need to use different ports.

I'm sure your ISP would be happy to sell you another IP address. You might have to get a different DSL router (I don't know if yours knows how to handle more than one public IP), but you won't need another DSL line.