How Many Simultaneous IP Addresses Does Your Mobile Have?

Once upon a time a PC was connected with a cable to a network and usually had one IP address. The same applied to smartphones until a couple of years ago. But no more, most smartphones today have more than one IP address at a time, at least some of the time. Any idea how many? Make your own count before reading on.

So here’s the IP address count for my smartphone: When connected to the LTE network it has one IPv4 and one IPv6 address, so that’s already two IP addresses. When I’m at home my smartphone connects to the Wi-Fi network and gets another IPv4 and IPv6 address. The IP addresses on the LTE network interface are not used while connected to the Wi-Fi network but still allocated. That makes 4 IP addresses. And in case the smartphone is VoLTE capable another IPv4 and IPv6 address are bound to the virtual network interface used for telephony. So that’s 6 simultaneous IP addresses. 6 IP addresses in your pocket, an interesting thought…

P.S.: Yes, I didn’t count the IPv6 link local addresses on purpose