Tools Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published Apr 20, 2026 4 min read

curl Power User Tricks

curl flags for incident response.

Verbose

curl -v shows headers; curl -vv shows TLS handshake.

Debug TLS issues.

Timing

curl -w "%{time_total}\n" times the request. Custom format strings break out per-stage.

Catches DNS vs connect vs response time.

Retry and timeouts

curl --retry 3 --connect-timeout 5.

Useful in scripts.