cURL hanging for 15 seconds when sending HEAD requests

Question

Background

I\'ve been timing some HTTP requests via the CLI using time and tools such as wget and curl as follows:

Answer 1

Why don't you just use the -I option?

-I/--head
    (HTTP/FTP/FILE) Fetch the HTTP-header only! HTTP-servers feature
    the command HEAD which this uses to get nothing but  the  header
    of  a  document.  When used on a FTP or FILE file, curl displays
    the file size and last modification time only