A transmission method and apparatus related to the field of communications technologies and include obtaining, by a session management network element, transport network capability list information, where the transport network capability list information indicates whether a transport network supports high-reliability transmission, and the transport network is a network between an access device and a user plane network element, and managing, by the session management network element, a user plane connection, of a terminal, between the access device and the user plane network element based on the transport network capability list information, where the user plane connection is usable for transmitting a service flow packet of the terminal.