Question

I have an iOS app using push notification but once in a while I’m not getting a notification on my device when I expect to receive one. I would receive all the subsequent notifications. I confirmed with my backend to make sure that all the notifications were sent successfully.

So my question is: is APNs nearly 100% reliable or should I just expect to miss some notifications here and there because of intermittent 3G/wifi connection?

I would think that APNs works as a queueing system and retry if it wasn’t successful within the first few times.

Answer 1

The APN service will queue messages up — but Apple doesn’t guarantee delivery of all messages. Only the last message from an application will be kept in the queue when the user is offline. Additionally, old messages may be deleted.

Local and Push Notification Programming Guide

Apple Push Notification Service
includes a default Quality of Service
(QoS) component that performs a
store-and-forward function. If APNs
attempts to deliver a notification but
the device is offline, the QoS stores
the notification. It retains only one
notification per application on a
device: the last notification received
from a provider for that application.
When the offline device later
reconnects, the QoS forwards the
stored notification to the device. The
QoS retains a notification for a
limited period before deleting it.