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The original was posted on /r/ipv6 by /u/DragonfruitNeat8979 on 2023-06-28 19:07:02+00:00.

Many mobile providers in my country claim to have “5G”, but they definitely don’t have IPv6 support. I actually have an Android phone connected to one of those providers (don’t worry, I did not pay for it, it’s a free trial eSIM they give out to test their “internet” without a contract).

The phone says that it’s connected to “5G”. The LTE Discovery app confirms that it’s connected to “5G NR NSA”. APN protocol is set to IPv4/IPv6. VoLTE works. I have Net Analyzer installed and opening it reveals that the phone has a RFC6598 legacy IP address (100.116.248.x). The subnet mask is 255.255.255.0 and the gateway is 100.116.248.1. Data State is “Connected”. There are no IPv6 addresses, those fields all show “N/A”.

If I change the APN protocol to IPv6 (only) from IPv4/IPv6, Data State immediately goes to “Disconnected”. The LTE Discovery app reveals that the phone is connected to EDGE. There’s no connectivity at all, in Net Analyzer the address fields are not present at all and even VoLTE disconnects.

According to this website - https://5ghub.us/ipv6-for-5g-transport/ (it’s some random website, so it’s not necessarily accurate, but I’ve also heard people say similar things about IPv6 and 5G):

From an early deployment aspect, IPv6 is seen as mandatory for specific 5G traffic flows, such as the 5G Control Plane (CP) and the 5G User Plane (UP). For the Management Plane (MP) and IPSec, IPv6 deployment in the early phase is not seen as mandatory but optional if available.

I’ve also found that:

The 5G User Plane Function (UPF) is the function that does all of the work to connect the actual data coming over the Radio Area Network (RAN) to the Internet.

I’m kind of confused. IPv6 is considered mandatory for the UP, but there are “5G” mobile providers that don’t do IPv6 over 5G.

One issue with this provider is that their supposed “5G internet” is extremely slow compared to the 5G of the 464XLAT 5G provider I usually use. In fact, it’s often slower than 4G. Possibly that’s related to it being IPv4-only?

I’m definitely not an expert on mobile networks. If there’s someone here with more expertise on mobile networks, I would really appreciate even a very short explanation. Maybe it’s related to SA/NSA, so IPv6 is only mandatory for 5G SA?