We compare the performance of a variant of the standard dynamic alternative routing (DAR) technique commonly used in telephone and ATM networks to a path selection algorithm that is based on the balanced allocations principle-the Balanced Dynamic Alternative Routing (BDAR) algorithm. While the standard technique checks alternative routes sequentially until available bandwidth is found, the BDAR algorithm compares and chooses the best among a small number of alternatives. We show that, at the expense of a minor increase in routing overhead, the BDAR gives a substantial improvement in network performance in terms of both network congestion and blocking probabilities.