No, they only work with nodes in the same facility as the NodeBalancer. Use TCP mode to route non-HTTP requests to your backend Linodes.
http://library.linode.com/linode-platfo … -reference">http://library.linode.com/linode-platform/nodebalancer-reference
http://library.linode.com/linode-platfo … ncer-howto">http://library.linode.com/linode-platform/nodebalancer-howto
-Chris