Most efficient way to store IP Address in MySQL [d

Question

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• Datatype for storing ip address in SQL Server 10 answers

What is the most efficient way to store and retrieve IP addresses in MySQL? Right now I'm doing:

SELECT * FROM logins WHERE ip = '1.2.3.4'

Where ip is a VARCHAR(15) field.

Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

Whatever is easiest for you to work with. The size or speed issue is not an issue until you know it is an issue by profiling. In some cases, a string might be easier to work with if you need to do partial matching. But as a space or performance issue, don't worry about it unless you have real cause to worry about it.

Answer 2

If you only want to store IPv4 addresses, then you can store them in a 32-bit integer field.

If you want to support IPv6 as well, then a string is probably the most easy-to-read/use way (though you could technically store them in a 16-byte VARBINARY() field, it would be annoying trying to generate SQL statements to select by IP address "by hand")

Answer 3

For IPv4 addresses, you may want to store them as an int unsigned and use the INET_ATON() and INET_NTOA() functions to return the IP address from its numeric value, and vice versa.

Example:

SELECT INET_ATON('127.0.0.1');

+------------------------+
| INET_ATON('127.0.0.1') |
+------------------------+
|             2130706433 | 
+------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)


SELECT INET_NTOA('2130706433');

+-------------------------+
| INET_NTOA('2130706433') |
+-------------------------+
| 127.0.0.1               | 
+-------------------------+
1 row in set (0.02 sec)

Answer 4

The most important thing is to make sure that column is indexed. This could make a huge difference to queries based on IP address.

Answer 5

maybe store the integer value directly in an integer field? An IP address is basically 4 "shorts".

Check it out: http://en.kioskea.net/faq/945-converting-a-32-bit-integer-into-ip