Then curl / wget are your friends
There was a short time long ago when I used wget. That period did not last very long.
curl is overloaded with "features" I will never use.
My idea of a good TCP client is a small, relatively simple program with few options that compiles quickly and easily.
FreeBSD's fetch utility is another one that comes to mind.
Perhaps counterintuitively, I feel I get more "control" from the simpler TCP clients with fewer options (that I complile myself) than I ever did from the more popular programs with too many options and unneeded libraries linked in by default. But that's just my opinion, nothing more. I would not "recommend" the programs I use to anyone. It is just my personal preference to use them.
[1] http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/contrib/maht/rc/httplib.r...
You would have fitted into the plan9 user community in the early 2000s and could still perhaps enjoy it today.
A small subset of us used the name "the Tim Berners-Lee kicking club", in reference to how one man killed the greatest tool ever created by adding a worse one on the top.