A method to perform operations, administrative, and maintenance (OAM) includes a controller generating a policy configuration packet, where the policy configuration packet includes OAM configuration information and information about a first path, and the information about the first path is used to identify the first path. The controller sends the policy configuration packet to a head node of the first path, where the policy configuration packet is used to indicate the head node to perform OAM on the first path based on the OAM configuration information.