I am experiencing a very strange issue on my Traccar server that appears randomly and is difficult to reproduce consistently.
At random times, position updates become delayed by approximately 20 to 60 minutes. During this period, devices may show as online, but no new positions appear in Traccar. Then, after some time, the delayed positions suddenly start arriving and are processed in bulk.
What is even more confusing is that I have observed location updates appearing while the device is already offline.
To investigate, I performed the following test:
- Moved a device and confirmed it should have been sending live positions.
- Traccar showed the device as online, but no new positions were updated.
- I then completely powered off the device.
- Disconnected the backup battery.
- Removed the SIM card.
Despite the device being fully powered off and disconnected from the network, approximately 20 minutes later Traccar started receiving and processing position updates from that same device.
The received positions contain old device timestamps, and the server timestamps also indicate delayed processing. This suggests that the data is being held somewhere and delivered much later.
Things I have checked:
- Server load is normal.
- CPU and memory usage are normal.
- No maximum connection issues.
- MySQL process list does not show any significant backlog or long-running queries.
- Traccar logs indicate that the data itself is arriving late.
- Restarting Traccar temporarily improves the situation and reduces the delay significantly.
What I cannot determine is where the data is being queued. If the device is completely powered off, has no backup battery, and the SIM card has been removed, how can position updates continue arriving 20–60 minutes later?
The issue appears randomly and does not affect all devices at the same time.
Has anyone experienced similar behavior? Could this be related to Traccar, Netty, a network provider, load balancer, firewall, reverse proxy, or some form of message buffering between the devices and the server?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as I have spent a considerable amount of time investigating this and have not yet identified the root cause.
I am experiencing a very strange issue on my Traccar server that appears randomly and is difficult to reproduce consistently.
At random times, position updates become delayed by approximately 20 to 60 minutes. During this period, devices may show as online, but no new positions appear in Traccar. Then, after some time, the delayed positions suddenly start arriving and are processed in bulk.
What is even more confusing is that I have observed location updates appearing while the device is already offline.
To investigate, I performed the following test:
Despite the device being fully powered off and disconnected from the network, approximately 20 minutes later Traccar started receiving and processing position updates from that same device.
The received positions contain old device timestamps, and the server timestamps also indicate delayed processing. This suggests that the data is being held somewhere and delivered much later.
Things I have checked:
What I cannot determine is where the data is being queued. If the device is completely powered off, has no backup battery, and the SIM card has been removed, how can position updates continue arriving 20–60 minutes later?
The issue appears randomly and does not affect all devices at the same time.
Has anyone experienced similar behavior? Could this be related to Traccar, Netty, a network provider, load balancer, firewall, reverse proxy, or some form of message buffering between the devices and the server?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as I have spent a considerable amount of time investigating this and have not yet identified the root cause.