1. A method of calculating a transmitter and dispersion penalty (TDP) for predicting optical link signal quality, said method comprising: 0) provide an optical link comprising an optical transmitter, an optical fiber, and an optical oscilloscope receiver linked together; 1) capture an averaged eye, using an optical test signal sequence to drive the transmitter with the oscilloscope receiver having an oscilloscope bandwidth as available; and from the averaged eye, capturing histograms A1; 2) capture a non-averaged eye using an optical test signal sequence to drive the transmitter, and from the non-averaged eye, capturing histograms B1; 3) de-convolve histograms A1 from histograms B1, giving an estimate of the noise on the signal and the noise stemming from the oscilloscope; 4) filter the waveform from step 1) that gave the averaged eye, as if in a bandwidth representative of the dispersion of the fiber link and the expected bandwidth of a data receiver in service, 5) convolve the filtered waveform from step 4) with the estimate of the noise from step 3); proving an eye and capturing the histogram of said eye providing a probability distribution function; and 6) calculate a soft TDP based on said probability distribution function.