A communication method includes a control plane node transferring a first virtual media access control (MAC) address in a plurality of virtual MAC addresses on a plurality of user plane (UP) nodes from a first UP node in the plurality of UP nodes to a target UP node based on that the target UP node in the plurality of UP nodes in a virtual broadband network gateway (vBNG) system satisfies a target condition, where the target condition is related to a load of the target UP node.