Unable to connect to world

Whenever i try to join my friend's world, it says "unable to connect to world" when we both have a secure connection. we tried unfriending and adding each other, we tried a VPN, we restarted our devices. we tried different worlds but its the same issue. and it let us join on a realm server which is super weird. Please check if this is an issue from your end as we tried everything and anything possible in order to connect. Thank you

Version: 1.16.221