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

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

> 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
    }