  It is a critical issue to compute the shortest paths between nodes in
networks. Exact algorithms for shortest paths are usually inapplicable for
large scale networks due to the high computational complexity. In this paper,
we propose a novel algorithm that is applicable for large networks with high
efficiency and accuracy. The basic idea of our algorithm is to iteratively
construct higher level hierarchy networks by condensing the central nodes and
their neighbors into super nodes until the scale of the top level network is
very small. Then the algorithm approximates the distances of the shortest paths
in the original network with the help of super nodes in the higher level
hierarchy networks. The experiment results show that our algorithm achieves
both good efficiency and high accuracy compared with other algorithms.
