receiving, by a first terminal device from a base station, a first paging early indication (PEI), wherein the first terminal device belongs to a first subgroup and a second subgroup, and the first PEI comprises an indication indicating whether to perform paging detection by the first subgroup and whether to perform paging detection based on the second subgroup, wherein the first PEI indicates a quantity of paging occasions (POs);

determining, by the first terminal device based on the indication, to perform paging detection based on at least one of the first subgroup or the second subgroup, wherein the first subgroup corresponds to a radio access network (RAN)-initiated paging message, and the second subgroup corresponds to a core network (CN)-initiated paging message, wherein a sequence number of an n^th subgroup is determined by the first terminal device based on a first value mod a second value, n is 1 or 2, the first value is determined by the first terminal device based on an identity of the first terminal device, and the second value is determined by the first terminal device based on the quantity of POs indicated in the first PEI, and mod denotes a modulo operation; and

performing, by the first terminal device, paging detection based on the determining.