NAT to an external address

[jadel menard]

	good day

	I am faced with a terrible problem.  I have a firewall (fw) that needs to, 
on some instances, route packets to an external IP address (B).  sending 
packets to web server A is no problem.  IPTABLES' NAT (network address 
translation) won't work for web server B right?  because we're not 
translating anything.  But if we just forward the packet on through, the 
orginal machine making the request will drop the reply (since it's coming 
from a different host than the one it thinks it's talking to).  How do i go 
about using IPTABLES to do NAT, but to a public ip address instead of a 
private one?

	thank you kindly

	here's some ASCII art that will help .

	private IP (works)
	------
	|     A	|
 	------
		\
		  \
		    \			public IP / different network entirely (doesn't work)
		------			    ------
		|   FW    | __ __ __ __ __ __ |    B	   |
		|	|		    ------
		------
	             public IP
		       /\
		        |
		       /|\
		        |
		       /|\
		        |
		--------
		|  original   |
		|  request  |
		--------

	thanx again

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Jadel Menard
Network Analyst
IDYIA / Cybershare Ltd
Phone: (204) 775 0181 ext 229
Fax: (204) 889 0311
http://www.idyia.com
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=