Why Does Matter Device Have an IPV4 Address?

Configuration Matter/Thread
1

I got a TP-Link Matter Light Switch (Tapo S505D) and was able to “commission” it with HA via QR code. It shows as a Matter device in the HA Matter Integration.

However, in the HA Device Info, it shows both IPV4 and IPV6 addresses for the device. My DHCP server also shows an IPV4 lease for the device.

Is this behavior expected? I assumed Matter devices would communicate exclusively over an IPV6 network.

Doesn’t having the device on the IPV4 network nullify or mitigate some of the advantages of Matter?

2

Matter can also to NAT64 to convert between the two network protocols and sometimes vendors still use IPv4 to make sure everyone can use their product with their cloud solutions.

Sometimes updates are only available through the IPv4 cloud solution.