Particular embodiments described herein provide for a system, method, and apparatus that can be configured to determine that a first network element is no longer connected to a second network element, where interests had been sent to the second network element and are still pending. Each of the pending interest can be associated with a pending interval timer and the pending interests can be forwarded to a third network element before the expiration of the pending interval timer associated with each of the pending interests. In an example, the pending interest is part of an information centric networking protocol.