Final period in .htaccss?

for banning an IP range

[Reno]

I'm having some trouble with bots crawling my sites that are not from Google, Yahoo, or MSN, and I'd like to stop them using .htaccess. They very often have the same first 3 ranges, but the 4th range changes from crawl to crawl.

Here's the IP example:

Crawl one:
aaa.bbb.cc.ddd

Crawl two:
aaa.bbb.cc.eee

etc

For my .htaccess file, if I want to deny all IP's in that final range (in this example: "ddd" or "eee"), do I need to put the period after "cc"?

So, would it be this:

Deny from aaa.bbb.cc.

or this:

Deny from aaa.bbb.cc

Perhaps it doesn't matter, but I want to make sure I get this right... thanks for any feedback...

........................

[jdMorgan]

Deny from aa.bb.cc
Deny from aa.bb.cc.0/24
Deny from aa.bb.cc.0/255.255.255.0

All are equivalent, using a partial address, network/CIDR notation, and network/netmask notation respectively, and will block the IP address range from aa.bb.cc.0 through aa.bb.cc.255

See Apache mod_access [httpd.apache.org] for more info.

Jim

[Reno]

Thanks Jim -- am assuming if they are all equivalent then I only need to indicate one of the three. Appreciate your prompt response...

..........................

[coopster]

am assuming if they are all equivalent then I only need to indicate one of the three

Yes. Assumption confirmed ;)