# How to purge a scheduled confirmed downlink

**URL:** <https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/t/how-to-purge-a-scheduled-confirmed-downlink/56849>\
**Category:** The Things Stack v3\
**Created:** [May 4, 2022, 11:42am UTC](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/t/how-to-purge-a-scheduled-confirmed-downlink/56849 "2022-05-04T11:42:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 5

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**Author:** ![markruys](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/user_avatar/www.thethingsnetwork.org/markruys/32/38705_2.png) [@markruys](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/u/markruys)\
**Post date:** [May 5, 2022, 1:49pm UTC](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/t/how-to-purge-a-scheduled-confirmed-downlink/56849/5 "2022-05-05T13:49:07Z")

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I’ve done some tests with confirmed downlinks which are not being acked by the device (for whatever reason).

- When you schedule a confirmed downlink it will show up when you run a `ttn-lw-cli end-devices downlink list`.
- When the device transmits an uplink, the downlink is sent to the device, and the `ttn-lw-cli end-devices downlink list` returns an empty list. This is also the case if the device did not acknowledge the downlink (!)
- TTN will retransmit the confirmed downlink in reply of each device uplink, as long as the device doesn’t ack.
- When a device rejoins, TTN keeps retransmitting these downlinks (!)
- When you schedule a new downlink, even with `ttn-lw-cli end-devices downlink replace`, the pending downlink is not removed and will be retransmitted again (!)

The only way to get rid of this confirmed non-acked downlink, is to either:

- let the device ack the downlink (duhhh)
- issue a `ttn-lw-cli end-devices reset`

In the later case the device must detect the session vanished and must rejoin. I was hoping that we could flush such a downlink without loosing the network session at TTN.

@kersing wrote that using confirmed downlinks is considered bad practice ([How to clear downlink queue programmatically? - #4 by kersing](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/t/how-to-clear-downlink-queue-programmatically/49212/4)), although I could not find posts explaining why.

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