A method comprising: at a computing platform comprising at least one processor, memory, and communication interface (208, 210): receiving, via the communication interface, a plurality of Internet Protocol, IP, packets, wherein each packet of the plurality of packets comprises an IP packet header and an application packet, wherein each IP packet header comprises a plurality of IP packet header field values, and wherein each application packet comprises a plurality of application header field values within an application header; determining, by the processor, that at least a portion of the plurality of IP packets have IP packet header field values corresponding to a packet filtering rule stored in the memory; responsive to the determining that the at least a portion of the plurality of IP packets have IP packet header field values corresponding to the packet filtering rule stored in the memory, forwarding the at least a portion of the plurality of IP packets to an operator (220, 222, 224) specified by the packet filtering rule, wherein the operator specifies one or more application header field value criteria; determining, by the operator, that one or more of the at least a portion of the plurality of IP packets have one or more application header field values corresponding to the one or more application header field value criteria specified by the operator; and responsive to the determining that the one or more of the at least a portion of the plurality of IP packets have one or more application header field values corresponding to the one or more application header field criteria specified by the operator, applying, by the operator, at least one packet transformation function specified by the operator to the one or more of the at least a portion of the plurality of IP packets. at a computing platform comprising at least one processor, memory, and communication interface (208, 210): receiving, via the communication interface, a plurality of Internet Protocol, IP, packets, wherein each packet of the plurality of packets comprises an IP packet header and an application packet, wherein each IP packet header comprises a plurality of IP packet header field values, and wherein each application packet comprises a plurality of application header field values within an application header; determining, by the processor, that at least a portion of the plurality of IP packets have IP packet header field values corresponding to a packet filtering rule stored in the memory; responsive to the determining that the at least a portion of the plurality of IP packets have IP packet header field values corresponding to the packet filtering rule stored in the memory, forwarding the at least a portion of the plurality of IP packets to an operator (220, 222, 224) specified by the packet filtering rule, wherein the operator specifies one or more application header field value criteria; determining, by the operator, that one or more of the at least a portion of the plurality of IP packets have one or more application header field values corresponding to the one or more application header field value criteria specified by the operator; and responsive to the determining that the one or more of the at least a portion of the plurality of IP packets have one or more application header field values corresponding to the one or more application header field criteria specified by the operator, applying, by the operator, at least one packet transformation function specified by the operator to the one or more of the at least a portion of the plurality of IP packets.