[ricardobayes]

Is there a legitimate reason why to obfuscate an ip address?

[herpderperator]

To get around something that is otherwise blocking it? Seems useful as part of, for example, pentesting.

[grayfaced]

On the wire it looks identical. It would have to be a very niche use, like a web form that filters periods.

[stanislavb]

I'd suggest - SPAM.

For example, I use the presence of IPs in the URL as a SPAM signal. If one used such an obfuscated URL, they could avoid some of the SPAM filters.