APEX

Hi Apex gurus,
I am building a system/network management module for my app right now and a bit stuck on how to achieve my requirements.
The schema is simple. I want to have a page where I will be able to create a network by entering IP network details. On another page I will need to create a system (let's say server) records where I will assign an IP address to this system. The systems part of it is not complected, but I am stuck on IP management solution.
The problem here is that while creating a network I want to be able to enter :
Network IP;
Subnet Mask;
Network Class;
Gateway;
Start IP Address;
End IP Adress;

Custom settings:
DHCP scope from XXX to XXXX
Static IP Scope from XXX to XXXX

basically this is the info you can get from any online IP calculator. The next step, after entering all this info into my form I want to have a page where I will see all my available IP addresses listed. Let's say I want to have page with report where all Static IP scope addresses will be listed and if the address is already assigned to some particular systems the report will show it as "assigned" and if it is free IP - "free"
To accomplish this, I would need to compare any assigned IP addresses to the Static IP scope but I am not sure how to compare IP addresses, do I need to convert address from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx to something?

Any ideas how to achieve this?
Thanks