Thanks very much for the detailed answers. You have supplied and confirmed lots of information for me.
I don't completely get what you mean by:
You should (must) use DNS entries for openser1 and openser2
Note that, for me, it's not DNS that's a mystery, but the exact sequence of words you used in this context.
The snippet of code used the name of openser2 as it appears in messages from openser2. It's pattern matching, not DNS. It also used the IP address of openser2 (src_ip), which also doesn't (or shouldn't) rely on dns.
I run the DNS, I run openser[12]. I figure I should be able to control things so that messages from openser2 look like I want them to look, and so should be able to do such comparisons.
Or, did you mean something else?
BTW, your comments, plus the nudge from Klaus, have convinced me to trash that code segment (the forward() kludge), so this is just a curiosity now.
Thanks, -mark