The present invention relates to a method and a system for controlling a process­ing load in a packet data network, wherein a load control information is set in a predetermined field of a message. The load control information is then checked on the routing path of the message and a processing resource of the packet data network is selected in response to the result of checking step. Thereby, load bal­ancing information can be provided at the network to thereby provide an efficient balancing and load sharing function without heavy string comparisons and data base queries.