Question on design

[David Lott]

(please reply directly)     I'm new to mysql and I'm working on a design for an application that will require a LOT of lookups on IP addresses.  Data set is on the order of millions of addresses.  In my reading, I have not encountered a TYPE of ip_address or some such.  Did I miss it?   If there is no such type, what would be the best way to setup the addressing for the fastest possible locate?  Use varchar (15) and put the whole address in? Use 4 fields A, B, C & D all as tinyint to represent A.B.C.D?   My assumption is that an integer search would be faster than a text search - am I correct? What works best?  How would you tackle this?       Thanks, David Lott

smime.p7s