im not sure if i should be using a hardware or a software solution for this but i'm hoping you folks could shed a bit of light on my situation...

im looking at hosting a web & sql server on "www1" and mail & ldap on "mail1"

now i will be using 2 public ip addresses for these 2 machines but will also have a 3rd address to use for my private network.

is there a software package that will let me forward specific packets or ports to specific servers on seperate ip addresses?

do i NEED the seperate addresses or can i send http requests to www1 (or www2 if www1 in down? ) and mail requests to mail 1 (or mail2 if mail 1 is down?) using port or packet forwarding?

if i use a port/packet forwarding solution, am i able to run a private network behind these machines using private class addresses?

im sorry if i sound a bit newbie-ish but i'm still rather new when it comes to linux.

cheers

Zach Fleming

you can use net sharing by NAT

and you can forward the packets to sepcific ip and also are you interested to make it like redundent?? in that case you'll need ipvsadm packeg...

If each server has it's own public IP address then you don't need to use port forwarding. You will want them placed in the DMZ so that they are isolated from the local network.

If you are going to have a spare web server, then I think that you want to use squid. There was an article on how to do this in Linux-Magazine, April 2005.

Googling may provide you with answers also.