The handwriting of a network error

Three curl failures from one small test network: curl: (7) Failed to connect to 198.51.100.20 port 8080 after 0 ms: Could not connect to server curl: (7) Failed to connect to 172.31.99.10 port 9999 after 0 ms: Could not connect to server curl: (7) Failed to connect to ghost.internal port 8080 after 3080 ms: Could not connect to server Same exit code, same wording, three different faults: a missing route on the client, a server with nothing listening on the port, and an address no machine on the network owns. Each needs a different first command, and the line points to none of them. A fourth fault, silently dropped packets, did not even get the sentence: ...

September 19, 2026 · 10 min