MANAGING USE OF INTERMEDIATE DESTINATION HARDWARE DEVICES FOR PROVIDED COMPUTER NETWORKS

Techniques are described for providing a managed computer network, such as for a managed virtual computer network overlaid on another substrate computer network, and including managing communications for computing nodes of the managed computer network by using one or more particular hardware devices connected to the substrate computer network to operate as a logical network node of the managed computer network that acts as an intermediate destination to provide one or more types of functionality for at least some communications that are sent by and/or directed to one or more computing nodes of the managed computer network. For example, a communication manager module associated with a source computing node for the managed computer network may determine to direct a communication from the source computing node over the substrate network to one or more substrate hardware devices that represent a particular intermediate destination network node of the managed computer network.