[augusto-moura]

Serialization for non human readable code. Usually IPv4 addresses are stored as int32 in databases or memory

[morelisp]

Perhaps rather "ideally" than "usually." I have worked on several codebases that wasted gigabytes of memory / traffic on this.

[mordechai9000]

Ugh. I would hate to see the code to enumerate a network, or calculate masks, or determine broadcast addresses without using unsigned ints.

[augusto-moura]

I had, unfortunately. Bitwise operations are scary for some people, so they prefer working with 4 ints or worse, using a string

[morelisp]

> 4 ints or worse, using a string

Or worse, in one case I've had to deal with both (plus another surprise twist):

    public class IP {
        byte[] value 
        // if true value is a variable-length ASCII dotted octet,
        // if false it is length 4 - with LSB in value[0].
        bool isString
    }