The present application discloses a packet forwarding method and apparatus. An access device receives a first packet, where the first packet is an Ethernet packet, searches an equal-cost multi-path forwarding entry for a matched equal-cost path according to a destination MAC address of the Ethernet packet, where the equal-cost multi-path forwarding entry includes: a virtual MAC address corresponding to a gateway aggregation group, an identifier of each gateway device in the gateway aggregation group, and an outbound interface corresponding to the identifier of each gateway device, where the identifier is used to uniquely identify a gateway device in a large layer 2 network; and if N matched equal-cost paths are found, encapsulates the first packet into a second packet according to a first path in the N matched equal-cost paths, and forwards the second packet according to an outbound interface of the first path.