To meet the increasing requirements for higher bandwidth and novel services, an evolution from static optical networks to dynamically reconfigurable architectures is expected. This evolution highlights the importance of providing network solutions putting forward scalability and flexibility as most critical specifications. According to these requirements, optical packet switching (OPS) networks provide high throughput, bandwidth efficiency, and excellent flexibility, as well as offering new capabilities to process packets directly at the optical layer. At this scenario, all-optical label switching (AOLS) appears to be a solution to avoid the bottleneck imposed by the nodes based on electronic processing. Notwithstanding the progress done in the field of all-optical networking, truly all-optical networks are still considered to be a long term solution. Hence, it is of crucial importance to develop a realistic and gradual migration scenario starting from current optical circuit-switched (OCS) networks. One of the topics addressed in this Thesis focuses on the proposal of migration scenarios based on hybrid networks which combine different types of switching technologies. Moreover, the design of an all-optical packet-switched network composed of optical nodes including new functionalities directly correlated with performance monitoring and recovery schemes is investigated. 
All-optical networks allow the network transparency to be improved but at the expense of increasing the complexity of the network management. In this scenario, optical performance monitoring (OPM) appears as an enabling technology for managing future OPS networks, where each packet follows its own path and will suffer a different degradation level at the destiny. So that, OPM is especially important to ensure that packets receive an appropriate treatment. The second and main topic of this Thesis focuses on the proposal of new monitoring techniques for OPS networks, where the main features will be performing the monitoring on a packet basis and directly working in the optical domain. To this end, a specific monitoring field will be inserted into the packet header. 
Additionally, the use of monitoring techniques for their applicability to OPS networks based on the combination of the optical signal with RF signals is also studied, giving place to the proposal of two cost-effective PMD monitoring techniques for high data rate transmission.