Disclosed in the embodiments of the present application are a communication method, a network device, and a terminal device, the method comprising: a first network node receives a radio resource control (RRC) connection recovery request sent by a terminal device in a non-activated state, the RRC connection recovery request comprising indication information, and the indication information being used for indicating whether to change the anchor network node of the terminal device; the first network node is the network node currently serving the terminal device, and a second network node is the anchor network node of the terminal device.