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First-pass cable-TV layout: road-following routes, terrain-adjusted lengths, RF amplifier placement and a costed bill of materials.
MST (Kruskal) + RG-11 6 dB/100m @ 750 MHz; amp when cumulative loss > budget
This planner produces a first-pass design using OSRM road routing, free terrain elevation data, and idealised RG-11 RF attenuation values. It does NOT account for:
A certified, licensed engineer must validate every output against field conditions before any deployment, design submission, or financial commitment. Read full disclaimer →
Plan an optimal cable-TV distribution layout: click the map to place a headend and consumer nodes, and the tool computes road-following routes, terrain-adjusted lengths, RF amplifier placement and a costed bill of materials.
No network calculated yet.
Amplifiers placed wherever cumulative RG-11 loss exceeds your budget, not at fixed intervals.
No network calculated yet.
No network calculated yet.
Every number on this page — cable lengths, routes, terrain grades, RF loss, amplifier counts and costs — is a rough first-pass estimate generated from free public data (OSRM, Open-Elevation) and order-of-magnitude prices. Figures may be wrong due to data gaps, service outages, straight-line/flat-terrain fallbacks, or simplifying assumptions.
Do not use this tool for actual cable-network construction, design submissions, permitting, or financial commitments. It is intended for learning, exploration, and very early budgetary sketching only. A certified, licensed telecommunications engineer must independently design and validate any real network against on-site field conditions, local codes, and current supplier quotes.
You drop a headend and consumer nodes on a map, and it sketches a first-pass cable-TV layout: it links them with a minimum-spanning-tree backbone, follows real roads (via OSRM), adjusts cable length for terrain (via Open-Elevation), models RG-11 RF loss to place amplifiers where they are physically needed, and prints a costed bill of materials. It is a learning and early-sketch aid, not a deployable design.
It uses real RF physics. RG-11 hardline trunk loses about 6 dB per 100 m at the 750 MHz design frequency, so the tool walks each cable run accumulating loss and inserts an amplifier the moment cumulative loss exceeds the budget you set (default 30 dB). After each amplifier the budget resets. That is how amplifiers are actually spaced in a real HFC network.
An MST is the cheapest set of links that connects every node with no loops. For a cable backbone that means the least total trunk cable needed to reach every consumer from the headend. The tool builds it with Kruskal's algorithm, then refines each chosen link with road routing and terrain so the length estimate is realistic rather than straight-line.
Road routing (OSRM) and elevation (Open-Elevation) are free public services that occasionally time out or rate-limit. When routing fails the tool falls back to a straight-line distance; when elevation fails it assumes flat ground. The segment table flags which data source was used for each link, so you can see where a fallback happened.
No. The prices are order-of-magnitude figures in your chosen currency, useful only for the earliest back-of-envelope thinking. Real cable, amplifier, labour and permitting costs vary enormously by country, supplier, terrain and project scale. Always obtain current supplier quotes and a licensed engineer's design before committing money or building anything.