Hello Antony, Thank you for your answer. Now the connection does not logged I can see the thirst packet on mail server, but it is timed out telnet X.X.X.X 25 Trying X.X.X.X... telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection timed out This is the log from mail server: Tue 2004-04-06 10:31:42: [804:52:2] Accepting SMTP connection from [Y.Y.Y.Y : 33222] Tue 2004-04-06 10:31:42: [804:52:2] Socket connection closed by the other side (how rude!) Tue 2004-04-06 10:31:42: [804:52:2] Winsock Error 10053 Software caused a connection abort. Tue 2004-04-06 10:31:42: [804:52:2] Unexpected socket closure Monday, April 5, 2004, 9:54:13 PM, you wrote: AS> On Monday 05 April 2004 6:14 pm, Oleg Savostyanov wrote: >> I get lost, trying to do a very simple thing... >> My mail server is inside my lan with IP 10.10.10.252 >> I need to open port 25 of my mailserver to the universe >> I made following >> 1)I permit in forward chain packets with dest. port 25 >> and >> 2)do DNAT in PREROUTING chain >> >> when I try to telnet to $EXTIP on 25 from outside >> telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused AS> Your FORWARD rule needs to allow the packets to the real IP address AS> (10.10.10.252) because the packets have already been translated by the AS> PREROUTING rule by the time they get to FORWARD. AS> Regards, AS> Antony. -- Best regards, Oleg mailto:osavostyanov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx