A method, an apparatus, and a system for processing packets are disclosed. The method is applied to a distributed architecture of multiple service boards; the distributed architecture includes a main control board, at least one service board, and at least one interface board. The method includes: determining a specified CPU corresponding to a received packet; and, by the service board corresponding to the CPU, processing the received packet. Through the embodiments of the present invention, the received packets are processed in the service board corresponding to the specified CPU. Therefore, the packets are evenly distributed to all service boards for being processed, the workload of the main control board is relieved, the service throughput is increased significantly, and the packet processing efficiency of the whole architecture is improved.