Headere

Headere is a fictional metadata header format used in digital data units to carry control information alongside the payload. It is designed to be self-describing, portable across platforms, and backward-compatible with existing data carrying protocols. The term headere is used here to refer to the generic concept of a header that provides metadata for the data that follows, rather than any specific standard.

Structure: A headere typically consists of a fixed-length prefix followed by a set of Type-Length-Value (TLV) blocks. Common fields include a magic number or signature, a version identifier, a payload type, a total length, and a checksum or hash. The TLV blocks allow extensibility, enabling new metadata fields without breaking older implementations. Endianness and alignment rules are defined per context.

Usage: Headere can accompany streaming packets, file fragments, or messages in messaging protocols. It supports routing, content negotiation, integrity verification, and error detection. In practice, implementations differ in the exact field layout and supported TLVs, which can lead to interoperability challenges if multiple factions adopt incompatible variants.

Origin and status: The headere concept is used in academic discussions and fictional contexts to illustrate the role of a header in data processing. It has not been adopted as a formal standard in mainstream networking or storage formats. When used, it is typically within controlled environments or as a teaching example to compare header design approaches.

See also:

- Headers

- Metadata

- Type-Length-Value

- Data packet

- Protocol design