The pheromone-based ant routing algorithm is a distributed routing algorithm with good scalability and robustness. A 2-D cellular automata (CA) model of the computer network was presented to analyze the algorithm. The results show that the procedure of establishing a stable route is self-organized towards the attractive peculiar state, and the duration of time for the routing establishment is power-law distributed. A practical ant routing protocol over an IP network was also presented, and two simulations were done to compare the performance dynamic and the load balancing performance between this protocol and the open shortest path first (OSPF) protocol. The results show that the ant routing protocol out-performs OSPF in these aspects. The pheromone-based ant routing algorithm is a distributed routing algorithm with good scalability and robustness. A 2-D cellular automata (CA) model of the computer network was presented to analyze the algorithm. The results show that the procedure of establishing a stable route is self-organized towards the attractive peculiar state, and the duration of time for the routing establishment is power-law distributed. A practical ant routing protocol over an IP network was also presented, and two simulations were done to compare the performance dynamic and the load balancing performance between this protocol and the open shortest path first (OSPF) protocol. The results show that the ant routing protocol out-implementations OSPF in these aspects.