A data offloading method includes: receiving, by a macro base station, a measurement report sent by a user equipment; sending, by the macro base station according to the measurement report, an RRC connection reconfiguration message and an offloading configuration message to the user equipment and a small node respectively, so as to configure a user plane data transmission link between the macro base station and the user equipment, where the RRC connection reconfiguration message includes indication information that indicates that one direction of a duplex direction of a current transmission link is kept, and resource configuration information in the other direction; and performing, by the macro base station, user plane data transmission with the user equipment over the configured transmission link. The embodiments of the present invention are applicable to the field of communications technologies.