iptables NAT HTTPS on external IP to internal IP - debian

Question

I've been trying to NAT HTTPS traffic on an external IP (say debianIP1) to an internal IP (say debianIP2) based on several examples/guides, like:

How to do port forwarding/redirecting on Debian?

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/4/html/Security_Guide/s1-firewall-ipt-fwd.html and

http://jensd.be/343/linux/forward-a-tcp-port-to-another-ip-or-port-using-nat-with-iptables

Unfortunetly, I'm not able to get it working. This is what I do op debianIP1:

/etc/sysctl.conf file, net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1 (IPv4 portforwarding enabled)

Commands:

• iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o venet0:0 -j MASQUERADE

• iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i venet0:0 -p tcp --dport 443 -j DNAT --to debianIP2:443

• iptables -A FORWARD -i venet0:0 -p tcp --dport 443 -d debianIP2 -j ACCEPT

When on debianIP1, and I perform:

• telnet debianIP2 443 - I can see I'm connected

• telnet localhost 443 - I get connection refused

venet0:0 is used as this is the only interface that shows an external IP (other is venet0 and lo). Including venet0 for venet0:0 provides the same result.

Can somebody tell me what I'm missing?

Answer 1

Try --to-destination which is not same as --to

Explained here

Answer 2

Based on the answer below I added --to-destination instead of --to, but that didn't solve it unfortunately. Connection refused.