Difficult Problem in R..Split Character String of Dataset, but Maintain Information in other Columns

Question

I am using R. Take the dataset I created below for an example. I want to be able to separate "ip" by "." while at the same time keeping the original row information in "color" and "status". I recognize that this will create a longer dataset, where entries for "color" and "status" will repeat themselves.

a <- data.frame(cbind(color=c("yellow","red","blue","red"), status=c("no","yes","yes","no"), ip=c("162.131.58.26","2.131.58.16","2.2.58.10","162.131.58.17")))