IP header
header of an IP packet
An IP header is header information at the beginning of an Internet Protocol (IP) packet. An IP packet is the smallest message entity exchanged via the Internet Protocol across an IP network. IP packets consist of a header for addressing and routing and a payload for user data. The header contains information about IP version, source IP address, destination IP address, time-to-live, etc. The payload of an IP packet is typically a datagram or segment of the higher-level transport layer protocol, but may be data for an internet layer (e.g., ICMP or ICMPv6) or link layer (e.g., OSPF) instead.
Two different versions of IP are used in practice today: IPv4 and IPv6. The IPv6 header uses IPv6 addresses and thus offers a much bigger address space but is not backward compatible with IPv4.
IPv4
IPv4 is the fourth version in the development of the Internet Protocol, and routes most traffic on the Internet. The IPv4 header includes thirteen mandatory fields and is as small as 20 bytes. A fourteenth optional and infrequently used options field can increase the header size.
“IP header” enters the record as header of an IP packet. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what header and packet can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“IP header” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, header and packet provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 25, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q84719357. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “IP header” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.