Flapping
Flapping is when a monitored service rapidly alternates between up and down, producing a storm of conflicting alerts.
Flapping usually signals a borderline problem (an overloaded server, a flaky network path, or bot protection) rather than a clean outage. Good monitoring damps it with confirmation across locations and cooldown windows so you get one clear signal, not noise.
Related terms
False Positive (Alerting)A false positive is an alert that reports a problem which is not actually affecting users — a false alarm.Quorum (Location Confirmation)In monitoring, a quorum is the number of check locations that must agree a service is failing before an incident is opened.Cooldown / DebounceA cooldown (or debounce) is a minimum waiting period applied before an alert state changes, used to suppress rapid, repeated notifications.
Start monitoring in minutes
EU-hosted uptime monitoring with multi-location confirmation that kills false alarms — white-label for agencies.