Is it possible to forward NON-http connecting request to some other port in nginx?

Question

I have nginx running on my server, listening port 80 and 433. I know nginx has a number ways of port forwarding that allows me to forward request like: http://myserver:80/su

Answer 1

It is possible since nginx 1.9.0:

http://nginx.org/en/docs/stream/ngx_stream_core_module.html

Something along these lines (this goes on top level of nginx.conf):

stream {
    upstream backend {
        server backend1.example.com:12345;
    }

    server {
        listen 12345;
        proxy_pass backend;
    }
}

Answer 2

This is technically possible for sure.

You can modify open source tcp proxies like nginx module called nginx_tcp_proxy_module or HAproxy.

Or you can write a nginx module similar to above one to do this for you.

Answer 3

if nginx remote proxying with HTTP, your client could use the HTTP CONNECT command, then it connects with the remote port and forwards all data as "raw" (or at least I think so).