Embodiments of the present invention provide a network control method and apparatus. The network control method includes: receiving, by a first network controller, a request message of a forwarding plane device, where the request message includes information that is used to indicate a network event and information that is used to instruct to request a processing policy of the network event, and the first network controller is a primary network controller of the forwarding plane device; and if the first network controller determines, according to the request message, that the first network controller cannot provide the processing policy, sending, by the first network controller, the request message to a second network controller, receiving the processing policy sent by the second network controller, and sending the received processing policy to the forwarding plane device.