A tunnel establishment method and apparatus are provided. A type of a tunnel established for each service of a terminal may be the same or different, given an entity for executing a solution remains the same. A first tunnel and a second tunnel is established for a current service of the terminal, or a third tunnel is established for a next service of the terminal. According to the application, the congestion is eased in a backbone network between a secondary access network node and a primary access network node. Alternatively, the provided method and apparatus avoid using a directly connected tunnel as a tunnel established between the secondary access network node and a core network user plane node when a core network control plane node needs to receive and send too much path switching signaling.