A WAN is a network that connects devices over a broad geographic area using common carrier transmission facilities. Components of a WAN include nodes, routers, hosts, and physical links. There are different switching techniques used in WANs, including circuit switching which establishes a dedicated connection for the duration of communication, and packet switching which divides data into packets that can take different paths to the destination. Packet switching includes datagram and virtual circuit approaches, with virtual circuits pre-establishing logical connections between sender and receiver. Frame relay is a virtual circuit WAN technology that uses permanent and switched virtual circuits.