cURL is a command line tool for transferring files with URL syntax, supporting FTP, FTPS, SCP, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, TFTP, TELNET, DICT, FILE and LDAP.
curl from PHP: PHP: CURL, Client URL Library Functions
# Performance Comparison* # 10 per minute for fopen/fread for 100 HTTP files # 2000 per minute for PHP/CURL for 2000 HTTP files