This article proposes the Implicit Packet Meta Header(IPMH) as a standard method to compute and represent common QoS properties of the Application Data Units (ADU) of multimedia streams using legacy and proprietary streams’ headers (e.g. Real-time Transport Protocol headers). The use of IPMH by mechanisms located at different layers of the communication architecture will allow implementing fine per-packet selfoptimization of communication services regarding the actual application requirements. A case study showing how IPMH is used by error control mechanisms in the context of wireless networks is presented in order to demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of this approach
