As an easy way to do the conversion to see the dotted-quad IP address of spammer websites posted as http://225179979697167/, I used to use ping. i.e. [jlewis@sloth jlewis]$ ping 225179979697167 PING 225179979697167 (204.179.76.15): 56 data bytes Ping from Red Hat 5.2 would take the lower 32-bits of the number, and use it as the IP. Red Hat 6.0 won't accept >32-bit numbers. In Red Hat 6.1, ping gives: [jlewis@gsvlfl-ns-1 jlewis]$ ping 225179979697167 ping: unknown host 225179979697167 [jlewis@gsvlfl-ns-1 jlewis]$ ping 3434302479 PING 3434302479 (204.179.76.15) from 209.208.0.2 : 56(84) bytes of data.
I could not reproduce this on a Redhat 5.2 system (+all updates) running 2.2.16, or recompiled on a newer system, so I guess this is an issue with libraries/headers. Nonetheless, I don't think this kind of broken behaviour should be supported. This won't work in other newer systems anymore either (e.g. FreeBSD 4.0).