socat vs iptables

[hellt]

Initially it seemed like a good idea to use iptables rules for mgmt traffic steering instead of multiple socat rules.
Like a single rule could forward all traffic from a source to the dest.

Ref vrnetlab#191 (comment)
Socat rules can be substituted with an iptables rule

But after running this for a year we've seen many issues with iptables/nftables support on rhel-based derivatives specifically.
Either nftables is not installed, or dnat kernel module is not present.

This kinda makes me steer more to socat again, and let iptables/nftables another 10 years to settle =)