The present invention provides devices and methods for dispersion compensation. According to one embodiment of the invention, a dispersion compensating device includes a negative dispersion fiber having an input configured to receive the optical signal, the negative dispersion fiber having a length and dispersion sufficient to remove any positive chirp from each wavelength channel of the optical signal, thereby outputting a negatively chirped optical signal; an amplifying device configured to amplify the negatively chirped optical signal; and a nonlinear positive dispersion fiber configured to receive the negatively chirped optical signal. The devices of the present invention provide broadband compensation for a systems having a wide range of variable residual dispersions.