ripcalc(1)
💖 ripcalc(1) — the User Manual, but make it cute 💖
hey bestie, welcome to ripcalc, aka your new favorite little network address bestie. it ships in section 1 of the manual (ripcalc(1)), you're gonna be obsessed, let's go 🦋
✨ NAME ✨
ripcalc — a tool for network addresses. that's it, that's the whole vibe 💅
🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸
ripcalc 127.0.0.1
ripcalc -4/--ipv4 127.0.0.1
ripcalc -6/--ipv6 ::1
ripcalc -f/--format “%a/%c” 127.0.0.1
ripcalc -m/--mask 28 127.0.0.1
ripcalc -c/--csv path/to/csv [-i/--field network] 127.0.0.1
ripcalc -l/--list 127.0.0.1
ripcalc -a/--available
ripcalc –abuseipdb [KEY]
ripcalc -s/--file [-] 127.0.0.1
ripcalc -e/--encapsulating [-s/--file name] [--group CIDR] [--countseen]
ripcalc -s/--file name [--inside/--outside] 127.0.0.1
ripcalc -b/--base [8, 10, 16 etc]
ripcalc -d/--divide [CIDR] 127.0.0.1/24
ripcalc –top [--delay SECONDS] [--interations NUMBER] [--noclear]
[--consume]
ripcalc –makecdb [PATH]
ripcalc –makethymecdb [PATH] [--data-raw-table PATH] [--ipv6-raw-table
PATH] [--data-used-autnums PATH] [--keepdata]
ripcalc [--mmasn PATH] [--mmcountry PATH] [--mmcity PATH]
ripcalc –networks [CIDR] 127.0.0.1/24
ripcalc –filter [CIDR]
ripcalc –filternum [NUMBER] [CIDR]
ripcalc –ula
ripcalc -q/--quiet
ripcalc -h/--help🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀
okay so ripcalc is That Girl of network tools. she can read IPv4/IPv6 addresses from the command line or standard input, and spit back different formats or the associated networks from a CSV. she does it all, no cap 🫶
she can format network addresses, find matches in CSV, or process a whole list. she can also convert input addresses that are in other number formats, like hex or octal — yes she speaks fluent nerdy 🌈
Given a list of IP addresses, print only those that match the network. When s and inside are used, only addresses from -s are printed if they are that are inside of the input IP network from the command line. This can be reversed with --outside, (e.g. ripcalc -s - --inside 192.168.0.0/16).
not me just restating that one because it's a whole sentence, but fr fr: use --outside and the whole thing flips around 🔄
When -a is used, addresses read from -s will not be shown when listing -l a network, showing only available addresses. (the taken seats are hidden, you only see the empty ones 💺✨)
When --reverse is used the inputs, sources or both can be treated as back-to-front. (she's doing it backwards, on purpose, iconic)
ripcalc can return a list of subnets when a network is provided along with the --divide argument and a subnet CIDR mask. 🍰
When --encapsulating is used the containing network will be returned, use with --group to limit the range that an encapsulating network can grow. Combine with --countseen to count the number of times the addresses are read in. 👑
The number (%D) of subnets can be printed when using the --group argument with the %N formatters. The argument should be the CIDR mask, see below for example.
If base is a negative number, input addresses are treated as though the input is a signed integer in base. (negative base = signed integer behavior, write that down 📝)
If --top is given a frequency of IP addresses will be shown and updated every --delay SECONDS (defaults to 1). This can be used with --cdb and --abuseipdb. --consume will read all stdin in for a report. 📊🔥
If --quiet is specified then parsing error messages will be suppressed. 🤫
When --filter is specified STDIN is filtered for addresses/masks given as arguments. Use --filternum to set the space delimited parameter that contains the input address.
Using --abuseipdb [key] can populate %{abuseipdb_var} values for --format strings, where var is the field name in a abuseipdb result structure.
--ula or the %{ula} format string will return a pseudorandom address from fd00::/8. 🎲
🍓 CSV 🍓
Network matches can be returned from a CSV. look at her go:
$ cat nets.csv
network,range,owner
rfc1918,192.168.0.0/16,bob
rfc1918,172.16.0.0/12,cliff
rfc1918,10.0.0.0/8,mr nobody
$ ripcalc --csv nets.csv -i range --format '%{owner}\n' 192.168.0.0
bobAddresses can be read via file or from stdin (-):
$ cat list
127.0.0.1/28
10.0.0.1/28
192.168.1.1/30
172.18.1.1/30
10.0.0.0/30
$ ripcalc --csv nets.csv -i range --format '%{range} %{owner}\n' -s list
10.0.0.0/8 mr nobody
192.168.0.0/16 bob
172.16.0.0/12 cliff
10.0.0.0/8 mr nobody💅 FORMAT 💅
% denotes a format control character, followed by one of the following:
%a— IP address string%n— Network address string%s— Subnet address string%w— Wildcard address string%b— Broadcast address string
Additional characters prefixing the above placeholder can control the representation:
%B— Binary address string%S— Split binary at network boundary string%l— Unsigned integer string%L— Signed integer string%x— Hex address string
Other format characters:
%c— CIDR mask%C— In encapsulated context, used address count%t— Network size%r— Network reservation information (if available)%d— Matching device interface by IP%m— Matching media link interface by network%p— PTR record%k— RBL/reverse DNS-style format%D— Network size (--networks)%N— Number of subnets (--networks)%%—%\n— Line break\t— Tab character
%xa gives the address in hex, or %Sa to return the binary address, split at the network boundary. 🧚
When using CSV fields can be matched by name when network matched:
--format '%{name}'🦋 inside/outside 🦋
When --inside or --outside are given addresses that match --file are printed. If no matches are found ripcalc will exit non-zero.
bestie. empty-handed = sad exit code. don't say I didn't warn you 😭
🌈 subnets 🌈
For large networks it can be useful to see the number of subnets, to see the number of /29 subnets within a /24 network, the command would look like this:
ripcalc --networks 29 192.168.230.0/24
IP is: 192.168.230.0/24
Broadcast is: 192.168.230.255
Network is: 192.168.230.0
Subnet is: 255.255.255.0
Wildcard is: 0.0.0.255
Networks (29): 32Or for a IPv6 /48 network that you want to subnet into /64, you can see there are 65536 subnets:
ripcalc --networks 64 2001:db8:1::/48
IP is: 2001:db8:1::/48
Expanded: 2001:0db8:0001:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000
Network is: 2001:0db8:0001:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000
Last host address: 2001:0db8:0001:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff
Subnet is: ffff:ffff:ffff:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000
Networks (64): 65536👑 encapsulating 👑
Suppose a large flood of requests are from a network pattern, to preserve service you may want to block the whole network that encapsulates a list:
please ip route add blackhole `ripcalc -e 192.168.56.10 192.168.57.1 192.168.44.47`Networks can be grouped, in a scenario where you have a list of unwanted traffic, you can turn this into a list of small networks to block, supposing you don’t want to block anything that covers more than a /19:
cat bad_traffic | ripcalc --encapsulating --group 19 --format cidrWhen using group the unique IP address count is available in the %C format string. This can give an overview of which networks have most IP sources:
cat bad_traffic | ripcalc --encapsulating --group 19 --format '%C %a/%c\n' | sort -rn🧚 ipdb 🧚
CDB files can be used for address lookup. --cdb should hold a path to a valid CDB file, in which a CIDR network address should be used as a key, and NULL-separated key=value pairs should be the lookup data.
CDB files can be created with --makecdb, which reads comma separated input, the first value is a CIDR network, followed by , joined key=value pairs. See cdb_maker.pl for an example script which can be used to create such files.
The option --makethymecdb can be used to download an IP database from https://thyme.apnic.net/. Alternatively, if the argument does not start with http, it is treated as file to read instead of download.
The --keepdata option can be used to retain downloaded data from --makethymecdb. 💾
💜 AUTHORS 💜
Ed Neville (ed-ripcalc@s5h.net).
that's the whole manual bestie, you ate that 🫶
written by Ed Neville, shipped as ripcalc 0.4.0, dated 22 July 2026 — and she's still serving looks. periodt. 💅✨
📦 where this page comes from
- ubuntu stonking: ripcalc 0.4.0-1 · GPL-3.0-or-later
- 💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms