My recomendation is to render de table in the client with handlebars and after apply data tables:

You will need an empty table:

<table id="mytable">
  <thead>
      <tr>
          <th>Col 1</th>
          <th>Col 2</th>
          <th>Col 3</th>
      </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody id="table_data_container">
      <!-- Populated by JS -->
  </tbody>
</table>

An ajax request, don't do pagination in the server-side, datatables will handle it for you in the client-side this means that you don't have to send the current page to the server, you just return all the available rows, if the number of rows is really high try to force the user to filter like search by name, id or something else you can then send that filter in the ajax request.

$.ajax({
    type: method,
    url: url,
    async: async,
    data: parameters,
    dataType: dataType,
    success: function(json){
        var container = $('#table_data_container');
        //your response should be an object like { items : [item,item,item,...] }
        var template = '{{#each item}}<tr><td>{{this.col1}}</td><td>{{this.col1}}</td><td>{{this.col1}}</td></tr>{{/each}}' //visit http://handlebarsjs.com/ for info
        RenderJson(json,template,container); //this will generate thehtml for the rows and append it to the table
        $('#mytable').dataTable();
    },
    error: function(response){
        alert('Error!');
    }
});

And a rendering function:

function RenderJson(json,template,container) {
    var compiledTemplate = Handlebars.compile(template);
    var html = compiledTemplate(json);
    $(container).html(''); //remove previous content
    $(container).html(html); //set new content
}

Hope it helps ;)