A mechanism is disclosed for performing data plane based routing during a handover. The mechanism includes executing a user plane function (UPF). An uplink packet is received from a user equipment (UE) anchored to a fifth generation radio access network (5G) base station (gNB). The uplink packet includes a change destination command, a destination field, and metadata including a destination address for the uplink packet. A change destination command in the uplink packet is executed by setting the destination field of the uplink packet to the destination address in the metadata. The uplink packet is transmitted to the destination address set in the destination field.