This disclosure relates to systems and methods for paging devices in a communication network. A network device providing mobility management through control messaging can be assigned a number of cell sites in a tracking area. The network device such as a mobility management entity (MME) can use a criteria or heuristic based implementation to provide a hierarchy for contacting a mobile device with a page. The criteria or heuristic based implementation can page a subset of the total number of cell sites in a tracking area and expand the subset after unsuccessful attempts to page the mobile device. The implementation can also be tailored to offer a range of options for page requests received by a network device, which can be based on such things as the application sending the page request.