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Assuming that the IP address that the domain is mapped to is known, are there any advantages to using this known IP address rather than using the domain? What makes the trace routing decision? Because DNS servers translate the domain names to IP addresses I am compelled to say that using an IP address is quicker, albeit unnoticeable. However, because DNS servers process these requests at a high volume and presumably cache the most popular sites I am also compelled to say that a DNS server might know the fastest route to the server which would result in the domain being slightly quicker. I understand that when I am asking which may be faster this quantification may be at the nanosecond or microsecond scale.
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Using a domain name to identify a location on the Internet rather than the numeric IP address makes it much easier to remember and type web addresses.
To use an IP address instead of a domain name, simply enter the IP address in the URL in place of the domain name. For example, the URL http://192.168.1.1/index.html would take you to the same page as http://www.pcwebopedia.com/index.html.
Just as a street address determines where a letter should be delivered, an IP address identifies computers on the Internet. Network devices use IP addresses to communicate with each other. The Internet uses DNS (Domain Name System) to enable people to use words instead of numbers for Internet addresses.
In short, an IP address is the address that computers, servers and other devices use to identify one another online. The vast majority of IP addresses are arranged into four sets of digits – i.e., 12.34. 56.78. A domain name is the information that you enter into a web browser in order to reach a specific website.
Technically, yes. At least the first time. The first time your computer asks the internet "Where is this domain name located?" and some machine out there responds with its IP address.
However, when it gets this response back it keeps a copy (called caching) so it doesn't have to ask again for a while (these things CAN change, but rarely do)
So, if your computer currently has the IP cached, then they are equal. If you don't currently have it IP is faster, but only for the first time in a few days and only a few seconds
As for the question of how the fastest route is picked. There are several routing protocols, most of which take into account several different factors including load on a connection, bandwidth, latency, jitter, and distance. Several others are also possible. Long story short is that the routers of the internet are constantly telling each other that such and such link is down or I just got a new address connected and they have algorithms that the routers run to figure out which way is best.
N.B. A side note is that IP wont always give you access to a certain website: take for instance a site hosted on a hosting service. They rarely have their own specific IP address, but instead requests for lots of different sites could come into one IP. In this case the domain name being requested is used to determine which site to return to the requester
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