a discussion starter i hope.

[alan barrow]

I have been using iptables-netfilter for a while and wish to clarify in my mind for once how to do the following.

Scenario: An iptables firewall has 2 interfaces, which are a public and a private interface, for simpilicty's sake. Behind the firewall a service runs which needs to be visible to the world at large in this case let's start with an easy one http, on port 80.

No problems so far :)

Now behind the firewall are 2 separate servers, each running a web service and each running on port 80.

1) The question is, with only 1 real world address available to you, what suggestions do you guy's have as to the configuration required to make both web servers available on the Internet ? So that incoming port 80 request on the firewall public interface go to the correct server.

2) The same as scenario 1) except you have 2 addresses available but only one external NIC.

3) Same as 2) except you have 2 NIC's.

The reason for this is the following is that, i wish to understand if there is a path to this result. I realise there are probably many way's to skin this cat, and i have tried a few of them, some of you may already be doing this, but in my experience there seem to be a lot of pitfall's and consequently the issues i have faced seem to suggest the following:

Some think it's possible, Some don't, some wish it was possible, many just say this way, others suggest that way, many just give up.

All in all i would like to take this to the logical conclusion of getting it working in multiple scenarios securely and effectively.

yours a.r.b.