Re: Best way to index IP data?

Michael Stone wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 11, 2008 at 03:07:38PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Michael Stone <mstone+postgres(at)mathom(dot)us> writes:
>>> Well, a native IPv6 type would also be nice; inet is ridiculously bloated
>>> for both IPv4 *and* IPv6.
>>
>> Nonsense. 3 bytes overhead on a 16-byte address is not "ridiculously
>> bloated", especially if you want a netmask with it.
>
> Big if, no? There's a very large set of users that *don't* want/need a
> netmask, which is why the topic keeps coming back. (Also, according to the
> docs, inet requires 24 bytes, which is 50% more than needed; is that not
> correct?)

So what this means is that our type oughta be optimized. How about
having a separate bit to indicate whether there is a netmask or not, and
chop the storage earlier. (I dunno if this already done)

Also, with packed varlenas the overhead is reduced AFAIK.

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