Abstract: A communications network (20) includes any number of moving switching nodes (30) and a route-determining node (28). The route-determining node (28) performs an off-line procedure (58) to define a-priori routing for the entire network. This procedure (58) is performed repetitively to track switching node (30) movement and to define routing for numerous epochs included in a planning period. The procedure (58) includes a process (86) for determining all shortest path routes between all possible origination and destination switching nodes (30). Another process (84) matches predicted call traffic for a subject epoch with the shortest path routes. Another process (88) generates routing code tables (54) in response to the predicted call traffic matched to shortest path routes. This process (88) assigns logical routing IDs (52) to physically distinct, shortest path routes in proportion to the predicted call traffic allocated to the distinct routes.