HTTP headers are metadata exchanged between the client (e.g., a browser) and the server during HTTP requests and responses. They contain important information for communication, such as:

1. General headers – Apply to both requests and responses (e.g., Cache-Control for caching rules).
2. Request headers – Provide details about the client's request (e.g., User-Agent, which identifies the browser type).
3. Response headers – Contain information about the server's response (e.g., Server, which indicates the web server used).
4. Entity headers – Describe the content of the message (e.g., Content-Type, which specifies the media type of the response).

Example of an HTTP request with headers:

GET /index.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0
Accept: text/html

Example of an HTTP response with headers:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 3456
Server: Apache

HTTP headers are commonly used for security (e.g., Strict-Transport-Security), performance optimization (e.g., Cache-Control), and authentication (e.g., Authorization).