I wanted to know how fast this would be in Flash. So I coded this version of a node based path finder:

Just click on a node. The start node is in the upper left corner.

http://mitglied.lycos.de/andreaskrenmair/flash/bfs.html

I used the breadth-first search algorithm for the pathfinding. The graph was built with simple objects that are linked together.

I was quite surprised that it is that fast with Flash Player 9.