woudl be something along these lines:
Dim vip As HttpWebRequest = CType(WebRequest.Create("http://website.com"), HttpWebRequest)
vip.Method = "GET"
Dim myResponse As WebResponse = vip.GetResponse()
Dim sr As New StreamReader(myResponse.GetResponseStream(), System.Text.Encoding.UTF8)
Dim result As String = sr.ReadToEnd()