Systems, methods, devices, and network architectures are disclosed for creating and implementing secure wireless, wired, and/or optical networks using specially modified “stealth” packets, cells, frames, and/or other “stealth” information structures. This enables stealth packets, network elements, and networks to have a low probability of detection, interception, and interpretation. The “stealth” packets, switches, networks, and methods provide invisibility or “cloaking” by modifying previously existing standards rules for packet structures, protocols, timing, synchronization, and other elements.Stealth packets, network elements, and networks may be further enhanced with encryption techniques by encrypting various parts of, or the entire packet structure itself, for example, headers, preambles, payload, and/or other packet elements. Using encryption to modify the packet structure itself adds an entirely new level of encryption complexity, thus making the stealth communications orders of magnitude more difficult to decrypt than standard decryption techniques.