177.*.*.* Block

.htaccess block IP

[cyberdyne]

Hi
I'm about to block the IP range 117.*.*.* via htaccess due to continued abuse of contact forms, guestbook, forum, etc.
I believe the whole block is assigned to China, Vietnam, India and a few other Asian countries which are of no interest to my site and vice-versus - apart from spam activity.

Does anyone know if any IP's within this range which are perhaps not allocated to those countries?

Thank you

[SteveWh]

I implemented the same block (117.*.*.*) for forum registrations a while ago for the same reasons. It is preventing dozens of spam registrations a day. What a find, a blockable /8 range!

There is a downside, maybe more severe for a site-wide block than for forum registrations. As I recall, it also blocks New Zealand (I don't recall how much of it) and a very small part (maybe just a couple of ISPs) of northern Australia.

[cyberdyne]

That would have no impact on the very localised site I'm implementing the block on.

One questions, did you block '117.' or '117' ?
I've seen both suggested.

Many thanks

[lucy24]

There should be no ambiguity, since you're at 3 digits already. If you're doing it in a "Deny from" statement, 117 alone is enough, so may as well save yourself the byte ;)

Some of that 117 range belongs to Bangalore, which means you might be locking out legitimate computer geeks. But if they're outnumbered by spammers and hackers I guess you're stuck.

[cyberdyne]

Thank you Lucy.
No, the loss of Bangalore geeks would not have any effect on the site I need to implement the block on. ;)
Cheers

[cyberdyne]

This is probably not the place to ask this but it is related to the above;

If I was to expressly block, for example, '111.22' using 'Deny from' via htaccess, would this restrict access to, for example, 111.221.1.1 ?

I am asking because I'm reluctant to omit the '.' from end of Deny From rules similar to my example. Presumably, in the example above, if the second octet has only two numbers, the '.' is always necessary to avoid the issue I'm asking about ?

Many thanks

[cyberdyne]

I have just answered my own question by testing.

No, blocking '111.22' does not block '111.221.1.1' (thankfully), only '111.22.aaa.bbb'