The present invention relates to the field of communications technologies and discloses a tunnel establishment method and apparatus. Even if an entity for executing the solution is not changed, a type of a tunnel established for each service of a terminal may be the same or may be different. For example, a first tunnel and a second tunnel may be established for a current service of the terminal, and a third tunnel may be established for a next service of the terminal. This eases congestion in a backbone network between a secondary access network node and a primary access network node. Alternatively, this avoids using a directly connected tunnel as a tunnel established between the secondary access network node and a core network user plane node when a core network control plane node needs to receive and send too much path switching signaling.