VoipDiscount

http://serverfault.com/questions/205040 ... de-the-lan

-A PREROUTING -d 89.179.245.232/32 -p tcp -m multiport --dports 22,25,80,443 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.2.10
-A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.2.0/24 -o ppp0 -j MASQUERADE
-A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.2.0/24 -d 192.168.2.10/32 -p tcp -m multiport --dports 22,25,80,443 -j MASQUERADE

The first POSTROUTING rule is a straightforward way of sharing the internet connection with the LAN. I left it there for completeness.

The PREROUTING rule and the second POSTROUTING rule together establish the appropriate NATs, so that connections to the server via the external IP address can happen, regardless of whether the connections originate from outside or from inside the LAN. When clients on the LAN connect to the server via the external IP address, the server sees the connections as coming from the router's internal IP address (192.168.2.1).

Interestingly, it turns out that there are a couple of variations of the second POSTROUTING rule that also work. If the target is changed to -j SNAT --to-source 192.168.2.1, the effect is (not surprisingly) the same as the MASQUERADE: the server sees connections from local LAN clients as originating from the router's internal IP address. On the other hand, if the target is changed to -j SNAT --to-source 89.179.245.232, then the NATs still work, but this time the server sees connections from local LAN clients as originating from the router's external IP address (89.179.245.232).

Finally, note that your original PREROUTING/DNAT rule with -i ppp0 does not work, because the rule never matches packets coming from the LAN clients (since those don't enter the router via the ppp0 interface). It would be possible to make it work by adding a second PREROUTING rule just for the internal LAN clients, but it would be inelegant (IMO) and would still need to refer explicitly to the external IP address.

Now, even after having laid out a "hairpin NAT" (or "NAT loopback", or "NAT reflection", or whatever one prefers to call it) solution in full detail, I still believe that a split-horizon DNS solution---with external clients resolving to the external IP and internal clients resolving to the internal IP---would be the more advisable route to take. Why? Because more people understand how DNS works than understand how NAT works, and a big part of building good systems is choosing to use parts that are maintainable. A DNS setup is more likely to be understood, and thus correctly maintained, than an arcane NAT setup (IMO, of course).

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answered Nov 24 '10 at 6:12

Steven Monday
7,56321430

This works perfectly, thank you a lot! I agree that DNS setup is better, but you cannot forward different ports on same external IP to different machines on LAN with it. Anyway, I'm the only one who will ever maintain this setup, so it's fine. – whitequark Nov 24 '10 at 6:25