🎙️ Introduction
Hey reader — welcome back 👋
I tried to change the NPC line… but failed again 🙄
This is my 9th and final blog in the Networking series, and honestly, it’s been a great learning experience for me too. The goal of this series was simple:
to understand the gears and mechanisms behind something as simple as a search working.
If you’ve been following along from the start — that’s amazing 🙌
If not, no worries. These blogs are always here to help you build a solid foundation in networking.
Blog 1: Understanding Network Devices - DEV Community
Blog 2: How DNS Resolution Works - DEV Community
Blog 3: DNS Record Types Explained - DEV Community
Blog 4: TCP vs UDP: When to Use What, and How TCP Relates to HTTP - DEV Community
Blog 5: TCP 3-way Handshake - DEV Community
For this final blog, I’ll introduce you to another tool — just like dig — that developers absolutely love: cURL.
💻 How we talk to Servers?
In the previous blogs, we learned how data travels from LAN → WAN, the devices involved, how domain names map to IP addresses, and how TCP and UDP work.
Now it’s time to focus on how we actually talk to servers.
🗄️ What Is a Server?
A server is a computer that provides information or services to other computers.
In today’s world, every app or service you use — Instagram, Google, Netflix — runs on servers somewhere.
Your phone or laptop acts as a client, requesting data from these servers.
🧑 Client → Server → Response
For example:
- You open a website
- Your browser sends a request to a web server
- The server sends a response back
- Your browser displays it for you
That request–response cycle is the backbone of the internet.
🌐 Using cURL to Talk to a Server
Developers often need to communicate with servers without a browser — for testing, debugging, or understanding raw responses.
That’s where cURL comes in.
⚙️ What Is cURL?
cURL (Client URL) is a command-line tool that lets a client (your computer) communicate with a server using a URL to fetch or send data.
In simple terms:
- cURL runs in your terminal
- It sends requests to servers
- It shows you the raw responses
You can use it to:
- Fetch web pages
- Download files
- Test APIs
🔬 Your First cURL command
Let’s try a simple example.
What this means:
-
curl→ invokes the tool -
I→ fetches only the response headers -
http://www.google.com→ the target URL
This command:
- Sends a request to Google’s server
- Receives a response containing:
- Status code (like
200 OK) - Headers (metadata about the response)
- Status code (like
The response will look something like this:
🎉 A Fun cURL Example
Try this command:
curl [ascii.live/parrot](http://ascii.live/parrot)
Copy-paste it into your terminal…
and boom — you’ll see a parrot dancing🦜💃
To stop the madness, press CTRL + C.
More info here:
Yes, cURL can be fun too.
📃 cURL and API’s
Now let’s talk about APIs.
An API (Application Programming Interface) is a server designed to communicate with programs instead of people.
🔑 Basic API Requests with cURL
GET — Receive Data
curl https://api.example.com/users
This fetches a list of users from the API.
POST — Send Data
curl -X POST https://api.example.com/users \
-H"Content-Type: application/json" \
-d'{"name":"Alice","age":25}'
This sends new user data to the API.
📌 Why Developers Use cURL for APIs
- Quickly test endpoints
- No need to write application code
- Easily inspect status codes, headers, and responses
- Great for debugging backend issues
😗 Ending Thought
This blog series has been one heck of a journey.
We covered the fundamentals that give you a real understanding of how the internet works behind the scenes.
If you’ve been reading consistently — thank you.
If not, give it a try. It will genuinely change how you look at the web.
Till then —
See ya, Amigos 🦩
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