Abstract: Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to sharing policy and workload among network access devices. In aspects, a network access device receives a communication between a first and a second node. The network access device may be one of a set of network access devices responsible for processing traffic to and from a set of nodes. A network access device determines a policy to apply to the communication and at least one network device to apply the policy. The determination of the at least one network device to apply the policy may include determining which network access devices are capable of applying the policy as well as the workload on the network access devices.