Simple options for port forwarding to a different port?

Posted by Nick on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Nick
Published on 2010-05-14T14:41:50Z Indexed on 2010/05/14 14:44 UTC
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I have three network printers at our local office, all of which listen on port 9100. Non of them offer the option of changing the listening port. We have a single public static IP address, and access to our main network is through a Linksys WRT-54G.

We need to be able to print to these printers from outside the office. The problem is, with the 54G, I can only forward a port to the SAME port on a particular IP address. What I really need though is a way to forward to an ip address and a DIFFERENT port.

I need to do this:

In port    Destination
9100    192.168.1.1 : 9100
9101    192.168.1.2 : 9100
9102    192.168.1.3 : 9100

So I'm looking for options.

I could setup an old computer with two network cards and IPtables I suppose, but that seems like a lot of overhead for something relatively simple.

Is there a way a virtual machine (read: one network card) could do the advanced port forwarding? Where I forward all traffic to it, and it forwards it on to the right printer?

Or what about those mini Linux distros that replace the WRT-54G's firmware? Do any of those support what I need "out of the box"?

I have a spare WRT- could I make it an IP tables router? Recommendations for mini distros?

Or is there an off-the-shelf product that does this (cheap/local preferred)?

Any advice / options appreciated.

Thanks!

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