Running multiple services on different servers with IPv6 and a FQDN

Solution 1:

We finally have the chance to leave one of the Internet's biggest mistakes behind in the dustbin of history. Don't blow it.

1. Strongly encourage your customers to stop worrying and learn to love IPv6 without NAT and get accustomed to typing in things like rdp.example.com (which they already should have been doing; the scenario you've described strikes me as horribly bad design). We have hostnames in part because various services are located at different addresses on the network; this NAT misfeature you're long accustomed to, which let you address individual services on the same hostname which were actually at different addresses on the network, will and must go away.

   Begin helping your customers transition to the new normal by providing those hostnames now and encouraging their use, even if you still only have IPv4. This will make the transition easier for almost everyone.

2. In cases where you must forward ports for the rare legacy applications that can't be updated, and the guy who can't remember his own name unless it's written on a sticky note on his monitor, this can still be done at layer 7 with tools such as xinetd and socat. Socat can forward both TCP and UDP connections, so it will probably be more useful.

A similar question, with much the same answer, was recently asked on Super User: How to port-forward IPv6 in m0n0wall?