APN delay and troubleshooting initial deployment

[Kinias]

Greetings!

My district is in the process of deploying a JSS for iOS and OS X management, and I'm having a lot of trouble with getting iPads configured because they frequently stop getting push notifications, sometimes for hours at a time. I'm totally new to the iOS world, but I'm getting the impression that there's an apparently random delay in push notification delivery; I've been told that anything up to 24 hours is considered normal performance by Apple. This is a bit maddening when I'm testing and in the initial stages of deployment, because I can't tell whether things are working or not -- whether I've misconfigured something or whether I just need to wait two or three hours for the Self Service app to show up on the device.

Is there any way to troubleshoot when push notifications don't come through? That is, how can I know if the problem is Apple being flaky -- meaning there's nothing I can do but wait -- or if the problem is something in our JSS or network or the individual iOS device?

I appreciate any wisdom the community can share :)

[Chris_Holm]

I've seen the same issue and some of it was a network that was a bit locked down.There is a small os x app you can get that just test if APN even works on your network. It's called Push Diagnostics and it can be found here: http://www.twocanoes.com. Other than that I feel your pain.

[bentoms]

For iOS, there is also the awesome "Services Test" app.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/services-test/id663823983?mt=8

[Kinias]

Thanks for the suggestions!