Push Notification Question

[Eric Shapiro]

We're getting reports from some users that our push notifications are not getting through to their iOS devices.

I think the problem is that non-cellular devices only check for notifications every 15 minutes or so. If a user gets two separate alerts from our push server the first one may get tossed out by Apple if it hasn't been received by the device yet. See <http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#technotes/tn2265/_index.html>.

Has anyone figured out a practical way to work-around this problem yet? Should we delay sending alerts to non-cellular devices for 15-20 minutes? We unfortunately get no feedback if a message has been received.

If the user opens our app we can work-around the issue, but the problem is that our code isn't necessarily even running and Notification Center won't show all of the alerts. If we try and combine alerts then iPhone users will see multiple entries for the same item.

A practical example would be a user that wants winter storm alerts for Detroit and tornado warnings for Miami. If we send out a tornado warning at 9pm and a winter storm warning at 9:05pm, the tornado warning will get lost. If we re-send the tornado warning, which has a very annoying sound, along with the winter storm warning, then an iPhone user will get multiple audio alerts when they should have received just one.

If nothing else, I wish Apple would give us a more reasonable sized queue, like 5 alerts, or feedback on which devices actually received alerts.

Suggestions?

Thanks,
Eric

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Eric Shapiro sha...@relium.com
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[Priya Rajagopal]

Hi Eric
Regarding "I think the problem is that non-cellular devices only check for notifications every 15 minutes or so. "- I have an wifi only iPad with notification center enabled and I sent back to back push notifications from my server and they all seemed to be received ok ( my app was in background). So not sure what you mean by the "non cellulite ..check for notifications".


Priya

Sent from my iPad

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[Eric Shapiro]

On Mar 21, 2013, at 3:52 PM, Priya Rajagopal wrote:

> Regarding "I think the problem is that non-cellular devices only check for notifications every 15 minutes or so. "- I have an wifi only iPad with notification center enabled and I sent back to back push notifications from my server and they all seemed to be received ok ( my app was in background). So not sure what you mean by the "non cellulite ..check for notifications".

According to the docs - and I haven't verified it yet - a non-cellular device that is *asleep* only wakes up every 15 minutes to check for notifications. If it is awake it will get them faster.

I suspect Apple may keep open a connection for a few minutes after putting it to sleep too, but I haven't tested that either yet.

-Eric

[Dave Koziol]

On Mar 21, 2013, at 3:55 PM, Eric Shapiro wrote:

> On Mar 21, 2013, at 3:52 PM, Priya Rajagopal wrote:
>
>> Regarding "I think the problem is that non-cellular devices only check for notifications every 15 minutes or so. "- I have an wifi only iPad with notification center enabled and I sent back to back push notifications from my server and they all seemed to be received ok ( my app was in background). So not sure what you mean by the "non cellulite ..check for notifications".
>
> According to the docs - and I haven't verified it yet - a non-cellular device that is *asleep* only wakes up every 15 minutes to check for notifications. If it is awake it will get them faster.
>
> I suspect Apple may keep open a connection for a few minutes after putting it to sleep too, but I haven't tested that either yet.

Apple changed the way things work in iOS 5. Prior to that WiFi devices only checked every 15 minutes. Now they try alot harder, but Apple didn't give full details. You always have the problem of the WiFI device being out of range of an access point too.

Dave

[Priya Rajagopal]

So tested and My wifi iPad 4 (ios 6) in sleep mode seems to be getting all the notifications . Now of course there are other factors/ network conditions that can cause notifications to get drop ( they are after all just best effort service) but i wouldn't expect it to be a non- cellular device only issue ( after all networks of any kind are pretty much unreliable ).
Unfortunately, I dont think there is a solution to dropped notifs other than to deal with it when apps come to fg :-(

Sent from my iPhone

[Eric Shapiro]

On Mar 21, 2013, at 4:45 PM, Priya Rajagopal wrote:

> So tested and My wifi iPad 4 (ios 6) in sleep mode seems to be getting all the notifications .

Thanks for testing. That's helpful.

[Marin Usalj]

Eric - are you using Urban Airship or a similar service,

or you're doing server-side on your own?

[Eric Shapiro]

On Mar 23, 2013, at 5:43 PM, Marin Usalj <mne...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Eric - are you using Urban Airship or a similar service,
> or you're doing server-side on your own?

Our own server.

-Eric

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Eric Shapiro sha...@relium.com
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