The purpose of this parer is to provide a survey of the state of the art of routing methods in store-and-forward computer networks. The survey is carried out in line with a new taxonomy： heuristic methods, user-optimization methods, and system-optimization methods. This taxonomy on routing algorithms is based on two viewpoints： the level of optimization and the relative difficulty for the implementation in real computer networks. Some actual methods implemented in real computer networks are surveyed as well as the theoretical studies in the literature. This paper concludes with some points in need of further researches.