Not a right/wrong approach, but a matter of flexibility. For example, my employer has over 250 locations in the US alone. We recently needed to install & configure email archiving, and deployed it by region. The 5 offices in the Pittsburgh area are considered "Western PA", and each has a /24 network in the 10.17/24-31.0 range. The assignments are not sequential, but only 5 networks are assigned.
When we were ready to deploy, I simply obtained the IP address and did an InSubnet($IP, '10.17.24.0/21') to install the software.
In a small network, ripping apart the IP and doing string or numeric comparisons will work fine, but as the network grows, it becomes unwieldy. The InSubnet UDFs actually convert the IP address of the host and network to decimal numbers, and convert the netmask to a number representing the network size, so it becomes easy to tell if the number representing the IP is between the beginning and ending network address ranges.
Having multiple methods to solve a problem is great, from brute force to finesse, or something in-between. Not only does it offer a choice of solutions but illulstrates different methods - a training exercise always!
Glenn
_________________________
Actually I
am a Rocket Scientist!
