Testing Connectivity to DNS Load Balanced Sites

Question: We need to test HTTPS connectivity to a domain www.example.com that gets resolved into 2 IP addresses 1.1.1.1 and 2.2.2.2. Sometimes the first node replies and sometimes the second. How to we check connectivity consistently from the command line?

Answer: Use the following commands to explicitly test connectivity to first and to second sites:

curl -k -I --resolve www.example.com:443:1.1.1.1 https://www.example.com:443
curl -k -I --resolve www.example.com:443:2.2.2.2 https://www.example.com:443