Pay a proper visit.

These examples use curl. On Windows, use curl.exe if your shell maps curl to another command. Replace the example URL with your authorized destination.

Fetch headers with a GET request · discard body
curl --connect-timeout 5 --max-time 15 -sS -D - -o /dev/null https://example.com/

On Windows, replace /dev/null with NUL. This command does not follow redirects; a Location header tells you where the server would send you.

Put a watch on the journey.

Linux / macOS · total request time
curl --connect-timeout 5 --max-time 15 -sS -o /dev/null -w 'HTTP %{http_code}\nTotal %{time_total}s\n' https://example.com/

Total time includes work such as name lookup, connection setup, TLS negotiation, and response transfer. It is not equivalent to ICMP latency.

An error can still be an answer.

A 404 or 503 proves that an HTTP response arrived, not that the application is healthy. DNS failures, TLS errors, and timeouts occur at different stages. Leave certificate verification enabled: an untrusted certificate is a useful finding, not an inconvenience to hide.

Next instrument: TCP →