A spanning tree is an acyclic, strongly connected representation of an undirected weighted graph. The minimal spanning tree is the spanning tree that has the lowest sum of weights of all possible spanning trees. The minimal spanning tree efficiently determines the [[shortest path|least cost path]] through a graph. A minimal spanning tree can be used to produce a routing table that can be used to lookup the best route. The internet uses a minimal spanning tree to route traffic. Confirm a minimal spanning tree by checking that each included edge is less than the every edge along the cycle created by temporarily adding this edge.