ASCIIEncoding encoding = new ASCIIEncoding(); HttpWebRequest webRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://www.google.com/"); webRequest.Timeout = 6000; HttpWebResponse webResponse = (HttpWebResponse)webRequest.GetResponse(); Stream responseStream = webResponse.GetResponseStream(); string responseEncoding = webResponse.ContentEncoding.Trim(); if (responseEncoding.Length == 0) { responseEncoding = "us-ascii"; } StreamReader responseReader = new StreamReader(responseStream, System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding(responseEncoding)); string answer = responseReader.ReadToEnd();