According to a first aspect, a transmission method is provided. The transmission method includes: receiving, by a first network node, a first message sent by a terminal device, where the first message is used to request to establish a radio resource control connection of the terminal device; sending, by the first network node, the first message to a first system; and receiving, by the first network node, a second message sent by the first system based on the first message, where the second message includes identification information of the terminal device, and the identification information of the terminal device is used by the first network node to retrieve context information of the terminal device that is stored at the first network node, or the second message includes context information of the terminal device, and the context information of the terminal device is access stratum context information.
In some possible implementations, the first network node receives the first message sent by the terminal device, where the first message is used to request to establish the radio resource control connection of the terminal device; the first network node sends the first message to a second network node; and the first network node receives a second message sent by the second network node based on the first message, where the second message includes the identification information of the terminal device, and the identification information of the terminal device is used by the first network node to retrieve the context information of the terminal device that is stored at the first network node, or the second message includes the context information of the terminal device.
In some possible implementations, the second network node is a control plane node of the first system.