How to force an update to a stale cached page?

[BloodyL]

Hello all,
I've been using podcasting to grab old time radio shows to listen while I'm out and about and at home.
Recently the cast stopped updating, I contacted the broadcaster and he said that he had been updating every night.
Further investigation reveals that the xml file used in the podcast goes up to 23rd April and stops there, investigation on Pipex DSL shows the articles go right up to today.
This leads me to believe that ntl's transparent webcaches are at fault here.

I have managed to workaround the problem by resolving the podcast host site URL using NSLOOKUP and instead of using archive.org/podcasturl/podcastname.xml I now use the ip instead: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/podcasturl/podcastname.xml
However if this has happened once, who's to say it isn't going to happen again with my other subscribed podcasts.

I've tried to force refresh both IE and Firefox, and adding ?1 at the end of the url, nothing worked.
I also spent bloody ages looking for an open proxy to see if I could grab the xml file through someone elses system, all the addresses I tried were either dead or locked down.

So, my question is this: Is there anything I can do to force a refresh of the cached page other than the tricks mentioned above?

Cheers.

[Chris W]

There is a list of proxy servers in our articles section- try changing to a different ntl proxy server to see if this makes any difference... apart from that, you have already tried everything i was going to suggest!

[BloodyL]

I've tried both types of listed Cache namely Inktomi & the new WebAppthingy whatsit!, along with several different locations, no joy.

---------- Post added at 22:10 ---------- Previous post was at 21:31 ----------

Ohh, forgot my manners there for a second, thanks for your help & moving the thread to the correct forum!.

[isisview]

I'm not sure whether this will help but you cound try using a tool called wget to download files from the command-line i.e. try to download your xml file manually by specifying additional download options.

You can pass various parameters to wget including --no-cache, --no-proxy or some of the other related proxy related parameters. --no-cache should cause the server to serve a file without it being cached on the way.

Again, I haven't used this method directly for the problem you describe but it may just help.

wget is available here: http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/

[BloodyL]

Nice little program that, pity it didn't work (even with both --no-proxy and --no-cache specified), thanks anyways!

[~Dan~]

To force an update to a stale cached page I just add a question mark to the end of the url.

[BloodyL]

Tried that bud, doesn't work.