[earl]

I was curious if browsing via ip still works, and at least for Y! it does.

   $ dig yahoo.com
   [ ... ]
   ;; ANSWER SECTION:
   yahoo.com.		1153	IN	A	98.139.183.24

plugging 98.139.183.24 into the omnibar on chrome leads to yahoo just fine [1]

[1] https://img.skitch.com/20120426-gdhrn9wpum12y39ifui3um37b2.j...

[eck]

That is because yahoo has its own servers and yahoo.com is the only website at that IP. For mere mortals like me with a dreamhost account or something, there's probably dozens of sites on the same IP, so your computer has to first connect to the IP then send the HTTP "Host:" header to say what site it wants.