Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition

Order, Allow, and Deny

So far we have dealt with potential users on an individual basis. We can also allow access from or deny access to specific IP addresses, hostnames, or groups of addresses and hostnames. The commands are allow from and deny from.

The order in which the allow and deny commands are applied is not set by the order in which they appear in your file. The default order is deny then allow : if a client is excluded by deny, it is excluded unless it matches allow. If neither is matched, the client is granted access.

The order in which these commands is applied can be set by the order directive.