A data processing method and apparatus including detecting a relationship between service data packets in a service flow, generating, based on detecting that there is a service data packet set with associativity in the service flow, indication information for the service data packet set, the indication information indicating characteristics of service data packets in the service data packet set and the associativity indicating that the service data packets in the service data packet set have an association relationship, and transmitting the indication information for the service data packet set to a core network element to instruct the core network element to process the service data packets in the service data packet set based on the characteristics of the service data packets in the service data packet set.