A relay selection method and apparatus and a system. The method includes: relay equipment broadcasts relay discovery information, the relay discovery information including identifier information (a relay UE ID) of the relay equipment and identifier information (a cell ID) of a serving cell of the relay equipment, so that remote terminal receiving the relay discovery information selects relay equipment according to the relay discovery information or transmits relay information of discovered relay equipment to an eNB, thus the eNB may select relay equipment for the remote terminal. With certain embodiments, the serving cell may learn a cell where a relay to which the terminal accesses is located, so as to perform configuration for the terminal or perform path switching of downlink data.