[paulfurtado]

> Both of them require you to do exactly the same steps - that is, connect to a hardcoded port of a server at a hardcoded IP address, request a user-defined resource, receive and display reply. DNS is not magic, IP addresses of DNS servers are hardcoded in your network configuration and/or in your router configuration and/or in your ISP configuration.

The steps are not exactly the same. Any sensible ISP give you at least two redundant DNS servers with your DHCP response and most public DNS providers also give you multiple redundant servers. When you do a DNS lookup, your OS or browser handles failover between the DNS servers automatically, client side. When accessed by IP address, as you've demonstrated, HTTP offers no client-side failover mechanism built into web browsers to fall back to a different IP.

It's additionally important to note that architecturally, DNS servers are far more scaleable than most HTTP servers. They don't run anywhere near as much code per request and don't require the overhead of TCP or HTTP.

Note that I'm also not encouraging using DNS instead of HTTP for serving websites, I'm just pointing out that DNS is a more reliable technology and has client-side failover mechanisms so the pros which mrb listed are very real.