When you select a hyperlink, the browser creates a packet requesting a web page and sends it to the specified URL. Your browser actually sets up a connection to the server. The server replies with the requested file (web page) and the browser displays the page. Your browser now stores this page in its cache memory so that after you have followed several other links, you can easily get back by selecting the Back button. The button retrieves the page out of the cache rather than having to fetch it from the source (which, as you have experienced, could take a while). You should periodically empty your cache. First, depending on the settings of your browser, it may never use the cache again. Second, if the browser does always check the cache first, regardless of age, when you sign onto the site the next time a month later, the page you see is the old one from the cache. Actually, this is an exaggeration because the browser has a setting for how old a page can get before a fresh copy is fetched. You can just throw away the cache folder (it is safer to discard the contents); your browser will build a new one when you launch it. If you do a lot of surfing, this cache can take up a lot of disk space.

You can always force the browser to get a fresh copy of the page by selecting the Reload (or Refresh) button.