header information

The structured routing and control metadata carried in the prefix section of a network packet or protocol message — distinct from the payload — comprising fields such as source and destination addresses, ports, and protocol type. The packet header contains information about the source IP address, destination IP address, protocol and port, making it the portion of a transmission unit that describes *how* traffic moves rather than *what* it carries. Packet filters compare this information — source and destination IP addresses, ports, and protocol types — with filtering rules that define a network usage or security policy, which is the canonical enforcement use: boundary protection devices employ rule sets or configuration settings that restrict system services or provide a packet-filtering capability based on header information, as opposed to deeper content inspection of the payload. The phrase is compositional — "header" and "information" each carry their ordinary technical meanings — but the combination functions as a stable shorthand in network security and information flow control contexts for the totality of routing/control metadata available to a boundary enforcement device wit

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