[Carnage]

I don't understand how CIDR improves upon just using the * wild card in a banned ip. e.g. 221.222.* or 221.222.0.0/16 look the same to me. Am I missing something?

yes. You don't have to use just /16 /24 /8 and /32 you could for example use /28 which would ban a range of 16 ips

We would like to be able to ban something like 221.222.131-255.* or even 221.222.131-155.*. I don't see any notation that supports this.

CIDRs aren't perfect, but the following ban 221.222.131.0/19 hits 221.222.128.0 - 221.222.159.255 You could leave it at that or add an exempt for 221.222.128.0/23 and 221.222.130.0/24 to protect the lower end and an exempt for 221.222.156.0/22 to protect the upper end.

I wonder if there is a calculator somewhere that converts the kind of range I listed above to a set of CIDR's.

The latest (vb 4 version) of this mod includes a calculator that goes from CIDR notation to range notation; in theory, if you upload the contents of the uploads folder to your 3.8 install, it should provide the extra features. (Don't import the vb4 product thou, as the mod will cease to work) I'll see how hard it would be to write a calculator to go the other way.

Allow banned IPs to see how long they are banned for.

This might be possible by just editing the phrase... I'll look into it.

Add an option to ban from within posts and profiles. Cause searching for a user and then finding their IP is a pain in the butt.

Its already on the planned feature list to allow banning from the delete as spam page; I see no reason not to include this; however the ip's will probably not be very efficiently banned. (eg it'll have to add a /32 ban for each and every ip the user uses. Trying to automatically work out a range would be VERY error prone.)