A communication method comprises that an application function network element first obtains transport information for a data stream, where the transport information includes information about an ingress port for the data stream and information about an egress port for the data stream. The application function network element then determines, based on the transport information, that the data stream is a data stream between terminal devices. The data stream is carried in two sessions. One session is a first session corresponding to the information about the ingress port, and the other session is a second session corresponding to the information about the egress port. The application function network element then can trigger a core network device to initiate policy and charging control (PCC) rule configuration processes for the first session and the second session, so that the data stream can be created.