Circuit switching is a digital communications technology in which the available bandwidth is broken down into pieces which are then shared between clients. This has the advantage that each individual circuit can have guaranteed performance, but the disadvantage that circuits, once created, cannot be shared even if they are not being used to full capacity. There is also a call-setup cost which is used when creating a circuit and since circuits cannot be shared the number of circuits is limited by the overall bandwidth of the communications link.

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