Embodiments of the invention provide a data communication method, including: sending, by a first aggregation node in a first pod, data packets of a first data flow to at least one core node in a core layer in a packet based balancing manner; receiving, by the at least one core node, the data packets of the first data flow, and sending the received data packets to a second aggregation node in a second pod; and receiving, by the second aggregation node, the data packets of the first data flow, and sorting the data packets of the first data flow to obtain the first data flow.