A programmable optical fiber delay system is built by using 17 optical switches and 16 optical fibers with different lengths. The system can realize the delay range of 0-65535 ns,step length of 1 ns, maximum data refresh rate of 100 Hz, delay stability of 0.2 ns, jitter delay less than 0.32 ns, and loss less than 31 dB. The delay accuracy, loss, and data refresh rate of the programmable optical fiber delay system are studied. The influences of loss and dispersion on delay measurement are analyzed. A threshold compensation method to reduce delay measurement error is proposed to compensate for the delay measurement error caused by loss and dispersion.