Sure it was. The gotcha is that you are using lots of code which incidentally doesn't handle hostnames, only well-formed dotted quads (consider what your code does if the IP its fed is bad) when you could fairly easily use inet_aton and pick up some error checking. The code is so complex that it isn't self evident and requires you to ask for extra pairs of eyes to go over it -- another gotcha.

Note that Socket is part of the core, and doesn't require an install fest.