Systems and methodologies are described that facilitate compressing headers for relay nodes. In particular, a plurality of internet protocol (IP) headers, tunneling protocol headers, and/or other routing headers in a packet can be compressed to facilitate efficient communications of packets between relay nodes and/or a donor access point. A donor or other upstream access point can be provided with a filter mask, bit stream, and filter mask identifier generated by a related relay node for packets having given static header data. Thus, the donor or other upstream access point can apply the filter mask to incoming packet headers, and where a resulting bit stream matches the received bit stream, can replace at least a portion of the packet headers with the filter mask identifier. The relay node can subsequently decompress the packet headers based on the filter mask identifier. Similar functionality can be used for compressing uplink communications.