In the foregoing procedure, if step S508 needs to be performed, that is, the first terminal identifier is not carried in the RRC connection establishment request when the RRC connection establishment request is sent in step S507, steps S507 and S508 may be performed in the other way around. In other words, the distributed unit may first send the first terminal identifier to the centralized unit, and then send the RRC connection establishment request to the centralized unit.
In the foregoing procedure, the messages corresponding to steps S506 and S510 may be sent through a same physical layer message, so as to save air interface transmission resources.
In this embodiment, the first terminal identifier allocated by the distributed unit for the terminal is selected from the terminal identifier set sent in advance by the centralized unit. In other words, the centralized unit performs division of a first terminal identifier for all the plurality of distributed units connected to the centralized unit. Therefore, flexibility of network configuration is improved.
S601. The terminal sends a random access request to a distributed unit.
S602. The distributed unit sends a second request message to the centralized unit, where the second request message is used to request the centralized unit to allocate the first terminal identifier for the terminal.