The first known WAN was created by the U.S. Air Force in the late 1950s to interconnect sites in the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) radar defense system. An enormous network of dedicated phone lines, telephones, and modems linked the sites together.

The foundation of the IP-based Internet started with the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the first wide-area packet-switching network with distributed control and the first network to implement TCP/IP protocol suite.

ARPANET initially interconnected the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and the University of Utah.

A WAN router, also known as an edge router or border router is a device that routes data packets between WAN locations, giving an enterprise access to a carrier network. Several WAN protocols have been developed over time, including Packet over SONET/SDH (PoS), Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), ATM, and Frame Relay.

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