I'm trying to forward connections on port 18600 to port 9980. I have this in /etc/sysconfig/iptables: # Generated by iptables-save v1.3.5 on Mon Oct 21 18:30:43 2013 *nat :PREROUTING ACCEPT [2:280] :POSTROUTING ACCEPT [12:768] :OUTPUT ACCEPT [12:768] -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 18600 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 9980 COMMIT # Completed on Mon Oct 21 18:30:43 2013 and /etc/init.d/iptables status shows me this: Table: nat Chain PREROUTING (policy ACCEPT) num target prot opt source destination 1 REDIRECT tcp -- 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:18600 redir ports 9980 However, I can telnet from localhost to port 9980, but not 18600. What am I missing? (This is a CentOS-based VM.)