Abstract: Photons are the perfect "flying qubits" for quantum communication: they travel at the speed of light and have only weak nonlinear interactions with their environment. While these features make photons ideal carriers of quantum information, many quantum communication protocols require qubits to interact in quantum logic gates. Although interactions between individual photons are too weak for reliable multi-qubit gates, it is relatively easy to implement efficient gates between different degrees of freedom encoded on the same photon. By using photons that are simultaneously entangled in multiple degrees of freedom ("hyperentangled") we can perform operations that are impossible for single-qubit states, as well as gain access to higher dimensional entanglement. We demonstrate that hyperentangled states can be used for efficient quantum state communication, increased classical channel capacity, and more efficient quantum channel characterization.