Embodiments of the present invention provide a gateway system and a communication method. The gateway system includes: a control plane entity, connected or integrated with a mobility management network element, and configured to allocate an IP address to UE and configure a data path for connecting a user plane entity with an RAN, a PDN or another gateway according to the IP address; one or more user plane entities, located between the PDN and the RAN, independent of the control plane entity, connected with the control plane entity and configured to forward data on the data path configured by the control plane entity. The gateway system of the embodiments of the present invention is composed of the control plane entity and the user plane entity which are independent of each other, the control plane entity takes charge of configuration of the data path, and the user plane entity take charge of data forwarding on the data path, so that the number of the user plane entities may be independently changed to adapt to the change of network traffic without replacing all gateway entities, the network deployment is more convenient and the cost is lower.