IP ban bug, false positive?

[societyofrobots]

Ok, just a summary recap. The users IP addresses, ones that I find in a traceroute, and ones attached to his hostname, are NOT in my ban list. None of them. For *some* of the IP addresses in the traceroute, only the first octet of the IP matches the first octet of a banned IP, but no other octet - and they still don't fall into IP address ranges that are banned.

For the most recent user I looked up IP addresses used in Germany, then removed all IP bans that matched (again, only the first octet matched). After doing this the user was no longer banned. Something complicated is going on that I don't understand . . .

I don't understand why SMF is banning an IP that isn't in the ban list, but it shows that something else more complicated is going on . . .