Relying on the "struct" module can cause problems with endian-ness and type sizes, and just isn't needed. Nor is socket.inet_aton(). Python works very well with dotted-quad IP addresses:
def ip_to_u32(ip): return int(''.join('%02x' % int(d) for d in ip.split('.')), 16)
I need to do IP matching on each socket accept() call, against a whole set of allowable source networks, so I precompute masks and networks, as integers:
SNS_SOURCES = [ # US-EAST-1 '207.171.167.101', '207.171.167.25', '207.171.167.26', '207.171.172.6', '54.239.98.0/24', '54.240.217.16/29', '54.240.217.8/29', '54.240.217.64/28', '54.240.217.80/29', '72.21.196.64/29', '72.21.198.64/29', '72.21.198.72', '72.21.217.0/24', ] def build_masks(): masks = [ ] for cidr in SNS_SOURCES: if '/' in cidr: netstr, bits = cidr.split('/') mask = (0xffffffff << (32 - int(bits))) & 0xffffffff net = ip_to_u32(netstr) & mask else: mask = 0xffffffff net = ip_to_u32(cidr) masks.append((mask, net)) return masks
Then I can quickly see if a given IP is within one of those networks:
ip = ip_to_u32(ipstr) for mask, net in cached_masks: if ip & mask == net: # matched! break else: raise BadClientIP(ipstr)
No module imports needed, and the code is very fast at matching.
is_multicastdirectly; not only is it easier, but you also get IPv6 thrown in for free!