Question : Redirect remote ip request

I have a compiled program (win32) that tries to connect to an ip address (for updates, etc). However, that ip has now changed, and I still want the online connectivity.

I researched how this program connects to the ip, and it tries to connect directly to an ip, not a hostname so editing hosts file is not possible.

Is there any software or hardware solution to "redirect" the remote ip to another ip address? I tried googling it, and I get ICMP redirects and IP tunnelling, both of which are not feasible for my problem.

I would need something similar to ip tunneling, except I "catch" the ip address and then "tunnel" it to another before it reaches outside my LAN or my NIC. That's my guess, but I can't find any suitable software.

Are there packet sniffers or some other hardware solution to redirect a remote ip request via TCP to another remote IP.

Answer : Redirect remote ip request

If you go the route of writing your own program, you can write a custom wsock32.dll (or whichever your application uses) which wraps all Winsock calls, and changes the destination address for connect() calls to a certain IP address.

I wrote something like that a long time ago (all it did was log the Winsock calls).  It's not too difficult.