Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, a network device that receives a failure message from a mobility management entity where the failure message indicates that a first connection request from an application server to an end user device failed based on the end user device being in an inactive mode, where the network device provides to the application server a target time for transmitting a second connection request to the end user device, and where the providing of the target time to the application server causes the application server to cease transmitting connection requests to the end user device until the target time. Other embodiments are disclosed.