For what its worth, this would be the bash equivalent: for i in {1..1000} do wget --quiet "somehost/$i" -O "$i.html" & done wait Take

For what its worth, this would be the bash equivalent: for i in {1..1000} do wget --quiet "somehost/$i" -O "$i.html" & done wait Takes 1.8 seconds here. But will obviously depend on the network situation and server. And there probably is something faster than wget.