Hi Matthisco,
Your IT colleague is right. Your question is legitimate. There is indeed a formula for finding the range of IP addresses that corresponds to a given subnet.
However, your question is more appropriate for a forum on networks than for a Coldfusion forum, for the calculations are quite involved. First, you must know whether the network is Class A (IPs of the form 10.x.x.x), Class B (IPs of form 172.x.x.x) or Class C (192.x.x.x). Other parameters you have to factor into the equation are the number of subnets, the number of subnet bits and the number of mask bits.
To learn more, search the web for subnet mask. In fact, there are online subnet calculators that generate IP ranges. You may then use such a range in your code.