title: Comparing IPAddress (stored as varbinary)
body: <p>I have an IPAddress column on my Activity table. This is stored as a varbinary(16) so that it can be efficient (moreso than storing as a string) and also support IPv6. When I store, I basically get the value of (new System.Net.IPAddress("127.0.0.1")).GetAddressBytes().</p>
  
  <p>What I want to be able to do is search for all IP addresses that begin with certain bytes, e.g. "127.*". I can easily get the bytes for that, so just assume that I am able to get new byte[] { 127 }.</p>
  
  <p>Given that, how can I actually write a LINQ to SQL query to get me the data I want?</p>
  
  <p>Sadly, I don't have StartsWith, though I essentially want the equivalent of Activity.Where(a => a.IPAddress.StartsWith(new byte[] { 127 })).</p>