ISO simple non-forking TCP connection forward/balance tool

[Chuck Swiger]

Hi--

On Jan 22, 2010, at 12:01 PM, Chris Peiffer wrote:
> Or is there a good way to do it in the kernel that I'm missing, and
> can someone direct me to an ipnat ruleset that creates new
> connections, so the TCP forwarding machine doesn't also need to be a
> router?

I don't know about ipnat, but natd (or kernel-level IPFW NAT functionality in newer versions of FreeBSD) redirect_port will do exactly what you've asked for:

     -redirect_port proto targetIP:targetPORT[,targetIP:targetPORT[,...]]
                 [aliasIP:]aliasPORT [remoteIP[:remotePORT]]

     -redirect_address localIP[,localIP[,...]] publicIP
                 These forms of -redirect_port and -redirect_address are used
                 to transparently offload network load on a single server and
                 distribute the load across a pool of servers.  This function
                 is known as LSNAT (RFC 2391).  For example, the argument

                       tcp www1:http,www2:http,www3:http www:http

                 means that incoming HTTP requests for host www will be trans-
                 parently redirected to one of the www1, www2 or www3, where a
                 host is selected simply on a round-robin basis, without
                 regard to load on the net.

(Userland natd doesn't need to fork for individual connections.)

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck