A thorough study of an all-optical chaotic communication system, including experimental realization real-world testing and performance characterization through bit-error-rate analysis, is presented. Pseudorandom data that are effectively encrypted in the chaotic emitter and sent for transmission are recovered at the receiver with bit-error-rate (BER) values as low as 10-7 for 1 Gb/s data rate. Different data code lengths and bit-rates at the Gb/s region have been tested. Optical transmission using 100km fiber spools in an in-situ experiment and 120km in an installed optical network showed that chaotic communication systems does not act as a considerably deteriorating factor in the final performance.