title: Help out a beginner with MySQL docs byte definitions
body: <p><a href="http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/miscellaneous-functions.html#function_inet-aton" rel="nofollow">http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/miscellaneous-functions.html#function_inet-aton</a></p>
  
  <p>I want to store users IP's in numerical values in my db. The docs says the following about the INET_ATON function:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Given the dotted-quad representation of a network address as a string, returns an integer that represents the numeric value of the address. <strong>Addresses may be 4- or 8-byte addresses.</strong> </p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>What on earth does this mean? And what length should my unsigned int field be for storing these values?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks for your time!</p>