SQL Server: Store and Retrieve IP Address

We can store IP addresses in SQL Server in a varchar column. However to retrieve IP address for a specific range, we need to split each part and compare it.

Consider the following table:

Suppose we want to retrieve all the IP addresses that fall in the range from 192.168.120.120
to 192.168.200.255. The following query will retrieve these IP addresses:

Here’s the same query for you to try out:

declare @from_ip varchar(20), @to_ip varchar(20)

select @from_ip='192.168.120.120',@to_ip='192.168.200.255'

select * from @t
where
parsename(Ip_address,4)*1>= parsename(@from_ip ,4)*1 and
parsename(Ip_address,4)*1<= parsename(@to_ip ,4)*1
and
parsename(Ip_address,3)*1>= parsename(@from_ip ,3)*1 and
parsename(Ip_address,3)*1<= parsename(@to_ip ,3)*1
and
parsename(Ip_address,2)*1>= parsename(@from_ip ,2)*1 and
parsename(Ip_address,2)*1<= parsename(@to_ip ,2)*1
and
parsename(Ip_address,1)*1>= parsename(@from_ip ,1)*1 and
parsename(Ip_address,1)*1<= parsename(@to_ip ,1)*1

In the query shown above, the Parsename function is used split IP addresses based on a dot (.) . As the IP address is stored in a varchar data type, we need to convert to integer to do calculations. Multiplying it by 1 will convert the varchar number to Integer

OUTPUT

About The Author

Madhivanan,an MSc computer Science graduate from Chennai-India, works as a works as a Lead Subject Matter Expert at a company that simplifies BIG data. He started his career as a developer working with Visual Basic 6.0, SQL Server 2000 and Crystal Report 8. As years went by, he started working more on writing queries in SQL Server. He now has good level of knowledge in SQLServer, Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL as well. He is also one of the leading posters at www.sqlteam.com and a moderator at www.sql-server-performance.com. His T-sql blog is at http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan