An introduction to optical networks in which the evolution undergone by such networks is presented in order to manage the future demand on the transport of IP traffic is described. This evolution has been boosted by the deployment of all optical devices featuring all optical processing capabilities. Similarly, an all optical packet router is presented based on the label swapping paradigm with the ability to route and forward IP packets at 10 Gb/s. The proposed router is able to process variable length packets and its performance is experimentally verified.