A method and apparatus for managing communication congestion for internet of things (IoT) devices are provided. An exemplary apparatus includes an IoT device that includes a data transfer controller configured to create a sensor message and dispatch the sensor message to a pipeline processing application in a cloud. A data store is configured to store the sensor message in a cache if it cannot be sent due to communication issues. A data backlog transfer controller is configured to send the sensor message from the data store when the communications issues are not present.