Improved computation of plane Steiner minimal trees (Q1186797)

A Steiner tree is the shortest network interconnecting a given set \(A\) of points in the Euclidean plane, with the introduction of additional points allowed. This paper examines recent technical results about Steiner trees that have allowed for considerable improvement in a computer program to determine the (exact) Steiner tree for randomly generated problems. While previously 30-point problems were effectively the largest sets that could be attacked, now 100-point problems can be solved.