couple of questions and suggestions to you

1)
Are you using all the fields from the table trace ? I could see only the field 'ip' being used.
If am right with the above, then what is the need for select ' * ' from table.
You don't need a ' * ' for that.

Code:

select * from table;

is expensive than

Code:

select specific_column from table;

so if you know the column that you are interested just use the column_name in the query.

2)
Query is run again and again where the data values are known in prior.

Consider this,

Code:

i=2; i<somenumber; i++

i=1 ( executed )
i=2 ( executed )

for the next iteration

Code:

i=2 ( executed )  //why this should be executed again, value is known in the previous iteration itself ???
i=3 ( executed )

effectively for ' n ' iterations you have ' n ' extra queries which I feel can be completely avoided. ( dropped as such )


3)
If only single column is extracted and if you are sure values are there definitely, there is no need for two queries. That could be rewritten something like

Code:

select ip from trace where trace_id >= $i and trace_id <= $i+1;

or even better if you have a running number as column in your table

Code:

select column_with_running_numbers_sequence, ip from trace;

use the above query to fetch all the values in one shot
and now you should have association like
record1 ip_value1
record2 ip_value2

the approach depends upon the table design


4)
What about the commit status of your program ? Is that auto commit ?
If so , that would definitely take more time because for each and every insert statement there is going to be commit statement which will definitely bring down the performance.

Only if the inserts can be clubbed and committed purely based on the criticality of the application you can commit after ' n ' inserts

Code:

insert
autocommit
insert
autocommit
insert
autocommit

is expensive than

Code:

insert
insert
insert
explicit commit

Please post how it goes ? All the best !