There are as many variations of IP usage and ways to express them as there are people that use them. For the Media Servers to properly understand and respect yours, certain syntax rules must be adhered to.

Following these syntax rules, your IP Ranges are Validated to a properly constructed list of IP addresses that the Media Servers can understand. Below are some examples of how to represent IP Addresses and Ranges that your institution uses.

Very Important:

Be sure to review the section about Reserved IP Addresses at the bottom of this page!

As in most cases, you have probably been supplied a list of IP addresses to allow access to the videos you have purchased. Some of these may be special, reserved IP addresses that are for internal network use only.

While these are valid IP addresses, and do serve a purpose on your network, they are never transmitted across the internet, thus will never be used for authentication. For this reason, they will be ignored (and dropped) when you validae your ranges.

The basic element - a single IP Address

e.g. 168.156.27.25. This is a single IP address that demonstrates each of the 4 octets using numeric values, and separated with dots. A similar format of 168.156.027.025 that appears to be the same, is not! IP addresses use numbers, but are not actually numbers, so the leading 0's make it a different (and incorrect) IP address.

Full IP Ranges using Asterisks (*) as Wildcards

In most cases, you will want to use wildcards. Since each octect can be any number between 0 and 255, it would be very cumbersome to have to enter every IP address between 168.156.27.0 and 168.156.27.255. This full range of 0-255 can easily be represented using an asterisk as wildcard character.

A single entry of this: 168.156.27.*
is the same as entering 256 consecutive entries like this: 168.156.27.1168.156.27.2168.156.27.3...168.156.27.255.

Partial Ranges

Wildcards are very useful for representing Full Ranges, but often every value between 0 and 255 is too inclusive. Let's say that only 5 consecutive IP addresses are to be used - this is referred to as a "Partial Range" and can be represented used a hyphen (-).

A single entry of this: 168.156.27.33-38
is the same as entering 6 consecutive entries like this: 168.156.27.33 168.156.27.34 168.156.27.35 168.156.27.36 168.156.27.37 168.156.27.38.

Combining Full and Partial Ranges

You can use both Full and Partial Ranges in a single entry that represents hundreds, or even thousands, of individual IP Address entries.

A single entry of this: 123.55.250-255.*
is the same as entering 6 entries like this:
123.55.250.* (256 IP addresses represented with a wildcard)
123.55.251.* (256 IP addresses represented with a wildcard)
123.55.252.* (256 IP addresses represented with a wildcard)
123.55.253.* (256 IP addresses represented with a wildcard)
123.55.254.* (256 IP addresses represented with a wildcard)
123.55.255.* (256 IP addresses represented with a wildcard).

So, the single entry shown represents 1,536 individual IP Addresses (the six lines shown multiplied by the 256 IP addresses that each includes).