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Indeed writing a _webserver_ to test connectivity sounds a bit non-simple.

The endpoint at their end was Windows. No nc. Apologies if that wasn't clear. I was testing our end reaching their endpoint at port 443.

nc is the client, if you could host a webserver surely you could have run nc...

Actually I misunderstood and thought the server was Linux.

You could of course use nc as the client too, but it would be an additional install on Windows. [0]

And nc wouldn't help if the firewall was stateful and actually expected to see HTTPS traffic on port 443, so I do see their logic of putting an actual webserver there.

But without sufficient detail, it does seem at first glance to be overkill ;-)

[0] https://joncraton.org/blog/46/netcat-for-windows/

Good point, but the dudes at the other end had no idea. I had to give them an .exe, which was better than a .msi.

Bear in mind the server was at the Windows end, so no good with telnet over that side...