It had both, gossip network and direct to IP.
Unfortunately, the implementation provided no authentication, so any "man in the middle" could have intercepted your bitcoins during the transaction. When they see that you're sending a Bitcoin payment by IP address, they pretend to be the actual destination and send back their Bitcoin address. You end up sending bitcoins to the wrong person. It's therefore no longer a good idea to send bitcoins in this way, especially if you're using a proxy.
The first Bitcoin (BTC) transaction received to an IP address ? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5108745.0