Maximum Client IP Length

Question

When storing a client's IP in long form (using PHP's ip2long) how large does the database field have to be?

Ed Heal · Answer 1 · 2013-09-15T10:39:47.523

2

4 bytes (assuming IPv4). That is all that is required.

EDIT

If you want to store IPv8 you need 16 bytes. You can use the mechanism as described on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6 to differentiate between the two

edited Sep 15 '13 at 10:39

answered Sep 15 '13 at 10:20

Ed Heal

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Doesn't `ip2long` only work on IPv4 addresses? I'm looking at the PHP manual and it seems to have an example of `ip2long` returning `3221234342`, that is 10 bytes, isn't it? – Jordan Doyle Sep 15 '13 at 10:22
@JordanDoyle - That is why I added "(assuming IPv4)" – Ed Heal Sep 15 '13 at 10:31

Vaibs_Cool · Answer 2 · 2013-09-15T10:26:18.760

1

15 characters for IPv4 (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx format, 12+3 separators)
39 characters (32 + 7 separators) for IPv6

8 groups of 4 digits with 7 ':' between them

So that is

(8*4)+7=39

or If consider IPv4

[0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:192.168.0.1]

then

(6 * 4 + 5) + 1 + (4 * 3 + 3) = 29 + 1 + 15 = 45

Or as jordan said You can also store the IP addr like this

INSERT table(ip) VALUES (INET_ATON('192.168.0.1')); /*ip = 3232235521*/
SELECT INET_NTOA(ip) As IPAddress FROM table;

edited Sep 15 '13 at 10:26

answered Sep 15 '13 at 10:20

Vaibs_Cool

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He's converting the IP address to an int using `ip2long()`. http://php.net/manual/en/function.ip2long.php – Annika Backstrom Sep 15 '13 at 10:23
What about when the IP is in `long` form such as `3221234342`? EDIT: Looks like Adam beat me to it – Jordan Doyle Sep 15 '13 at 10:23
@JordanDoyle chk my updated answer – Vaibs_Cool Sep 15 '13 at 10:27

Maximum Client IP Length

2 Answers2