Trouble with Netty IdleStateHandler - am I testing it the wrong way?

Question

I have a toy Netty server and am trying to send heartbeat messages to clients when nothing has happened on their channels. I am testing this by telnetting to the server, writing

Answer 1

You missed to add the HeartbeatHandler in the ChannelPipeline. You need to add IdleStateHandler AND HeartbeatHandler to the ChannelPipeline to have it work.