just curious, how many rows in this big table?

there's always room for one more...

these "challenge" questions are pretty much always homework...

How about changing the schema of your table?  can you do this?  This query is difficult because you are storing IPs as strings.  It would be a much simpler query...

sounds like you need to learn the syntax of the UPDATE keyword

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177523.aspx

creating permanent tables at runtime is a really bad idea.  the database is the foundation of your app.  if the schema is changing at runtime, you are building on a...

"Locks escalate from row->page->table"

this is not true in 2005 (not sure about 2000). 

from BOL:

"The Database Engine does not escalate row or key-range locks to page locks, but escalates them...

calculating the next ID is not recommended.  use identity.

do you mean create a view in database A that queries from database B?  if they are on the same server it's easy, just use 3 part names:

create view dbo.MyView...

"Does anyone have any suggestions on how we can efficiently do a join using multiple SQL Servers in .net without replication or linked servers?"

the terms "efficient" and "join using multiple...

you ought to read about coalesce.  it's very useful for handling nulls as it can take mupltiple args.  That is:

select coalesce(col1, col2, col3, col4, ...) from mytable

will return the value...

I even go so far as to often include a 1=1 in my where clause so I can comment out any part of the where clause:

select * from blah where...

DMO is an obsolete object model that wraps SQL Server.  It has been replaced with SMO in 2005.

but I think you are thinking of dbo, not DMO.  dbo (usually) in...

as a dev, I have to say I'd be pretty unhappy if I had to share my servers with test. 

I often do stress tests which bog down the server, and...

Joe Celko's nested set model is worth a look too.

http://www.intelligententerprise.com/001020/celko.jhtml