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14 calculators for the arithmetic that comes up when you design, quote or commission an optical link — link budgets, power conversion, the ITU grid, latency, dispersion and MPO fibre counts. Everything runs in your browser: nothing is uploaded, there is no sign-up, and every calculation can be shared as a link.
Total channel loss, power budget and pass/fail margin for single-mode and multimode links
Open tool →Convert optical power between logarithmic and linear units, in both directions
Open tool →Turn insertion loss in decibels into the percentage of light that actually gets through
Open tool →nm ⇄ THz ⇄ GHz, plus photon energy and the optical band each wavelength falls in
Open tool →ITU channel number ⇄ frequency ⇄ wavelength, for 100/50/25/12.5 GHz DWDM and the 20 nm CWDM grid
Open tool →One-way and round-trip delay from route length and fibre refractive index
Open tool →How long a given volume of data takes across a link, with protocol overhead and efficiency factored in
Open tool →Pulse spread from Δt = D · L · Δλ, and the distance at which dispersion — not loss — ends the link
Open tool →Pick a standard and get the wavelength plan, fibre type, connector, reach and planning loss budget
Open tool →Turn a switch port count into the trunks, cassettes and harnesses you actually have to buy
Open tool →Three-year cost of ownership per port — module price, power, cooling and failures
Open tool →Per-port wattage rolled up to switch, rack and cooling load — and whether the rack can take it
Open tool →Turn a switch port count and a breakout ratio into the exact optics and cables to order
Open tool →How far each Ethernet and Fibre Channel standard actually runs on each grade of multimode fibre
Open tool →Most optical design questions come down to three numbers: how much light you have, how much the channel takes away, and whether what is left is enough. The link budget calculator answers that directly, and the power converter and dB/percentage converter handle the unit juggling that gets in the way.
On longer single-mode spans loss is often not the limit at all. The dispersion calculator tells you the distance at which pulses smear into each other, which is why an 80 km link can fail while the power budget still looks healthy. For wavelength-division work, the DWDM/CWDM grid calculator and the wavelength converter map between ITU channels, frequencies and nanometres.
The last two are about the plant rather than the physics. The standard lookup tells you what wavelength plan, fibre and connector a given Ethernet standard demands, and the MPO cabling planner turns a switch port count into the trunks, cassettes and harnesses you actually have to buy — including how much of a base-12 trunk goes to waste on base-8 optics.
Yes, completely — no sign-up, no limits and nothing to install. They run entirely in your browser, so nothing you type is sent anywhere or stored. Use the 'Copy link to this calculation' button if you want to share a specific set of numbers with a colleague.
The physics is exact — these are the standard formulas, not approximations. What varies is the input data: default attenuation, connector loss and dispersion figures are industry planning values, and the part you actually buy may be better or worse. Design with these, then confirm against the datasheet.
For a new link: check the standard with the standard lookup, size the fibre with the cabling planner, then prove the span with the link budget and — on anything over 40 km — the dispersion calculator.
Yes. Every calculator is responsive and recalculates as you type, which makes them practical on site with a meter in your other hand.
Once the numbers work, we build the parts — transceivers, MPO assemblies, WDM and patch cords, tested to the figures you designed to.