Seconding this; during my B2B support days, this was essential, especially, since as security got a bit crazy, not all systems had telnet installed anymore and you weren't always in a position to install it.

Windows' best equivalent if it doesn't have telnet is from powershell:

Test-NetConnection -Computername [hostname or IP] -Port [some port number]

With the -Port flag, it will try to do a similar connection to a specific port.

Old habits die hard I guess ;)

Btw, had a classmate in college we called chungi (pronounced choon-ghee), we made some cool school projects together, including a videogame

Thanks for the nc recommendation

cool!

nc google.com 80

    HEAD / HTTP/1.1

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    ...

Hint: write `HEAD / HTTP/1.1` and hit twice {ENTER}

I'm actually a little surprised that worked; one of the major differences between HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1 is that all HTTP/1.1 requests MUST include a Host HTTP header, so technically a HTTP/1.1 request without such a header is malformed.

Web servers have always had to be written for the web clients that existed, not how they should have existed.

Sadly, a 100%-compliant web server (or client for that matter) would be greatly hobbled as to who it could communicate with on the real web. Although I do think the situation is far better now than it was 20 years ago.