ISP cache causing you problems
Emptying Cached or Temporary Internet Files

ISP cache causing you problems

People who are not on Line-Tap may have already experienced the refresh or renew problems. Some ISP's use what they call a cached feed; from the user's perspective, this is not a good feature. Even though the Internet will seem faster, what you are actually getting is old information that has been stored locally at your provider's site. This information will not change until your provider's cache has been flushed and then it will go to the source website to retrieve new information. This can take anywhere from 1 hour to several days, depending on the provider's traffic. Just think what this is doing to your so called "up to date" stock quotes. There is a remedy if you suspect this happening you can delete the cache files (this should be done from time-to-time anyway).


Emptying Cached or Temporary Internet Files

Some browsers, such as Netscape and Internet Explorer, save the files you access from the Internet in a "cache" or "temporary internet files" folder. This feature saves you time when accessing a page that you have visited before; instead of sending your file request back over the phone lines to request the file from the server, your computer simply pulls it from your local harddrive. This is also how you can view webpages offline; they are stored in this cache. This otherwise helpful feature can cause confusion when you access time-sensitive pages, such as calendars of events which may have been updated since the last time you visited them. For this reason, you should "refresh" or "reload" your browser when visiting time-sensitive pages. You should also periodically empty your cache or temporary files folder. Each browser deletes temporary internet files with a different set of menu options; please consult the "help" feature in your browser.


Internet Explorer


Netscape 3.0

Continue back to the web page then use the reload to get the updated info.


Created: October 20, 1999
Last Updated: November 13, 2000