The present invention is applicable to the field of communications and provides a session establishment method and apparatus. The method includes: acquiring an infrastructure virtual circuit IVC corresponding to a user equipment UE; sending a virtual local area network VLAN label corresponding to the IVC to a customer location function set, so that the customer location function set adds the VLAN label to a packet of the UE, where the VLAN label is configured by an L2 session control functional entity for the IVC; and notifying an L2 forwarding functional entity of the VLAN label, so that the L2 forwarding functional entity forwards, to the IVC, the packet sent by the customer location function set and added with the VLAN label. In the present invention, a case in which the L2 forwarding functional entity needs to store a large MAC table is avoided, and packet forwarding efficiency is improved.