[Paul M]

Originally Posted by Kevlar

Then my final question is ... why didn't the vB team add an index to that column already (especially since big boards all over suffer from this problem)

Perhaps no one has ever suggested it ?

Originally Posted by Xenon

but on the other hand, there are a lot of forums, which don't store the ips, and then and index wouldn't be of use

True, but it wouldn't harm anything.

Originally Posted by Xenon

as i posted above, and index also has negative aspects, if it wouldn't you could always index every single field

While indexing every field would ot make sense, there are a number of places that really could use them. The extra speed and saved resources on a select are usually worth the small amount of extra overhead when a record is added, and the space taken up. IMO people are often too afraid to add indexes when they really shouldn't be.