CLF-C02 Cloud Technology and Services Practice Question
A company wants to implement a hub-and-spoke network architecture where multiple VPCs can communicate with a shared services VPC (containing DNS, monitoring, and security tools) but not with each other. Which AWS networking feature enables this?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse VPC Peering with Transit Gateway, assuming that route table customization in peering can achieve transitive routing, but VPC Peering does not support transitive routing (e.g., if VPC A is peered with VPC B and VPC B is peered with VPC C, VPC A cannot reach VPC C through VPC B).
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
AWS Transit Gateway with route tables
AWS Transit Gateway with route tables is the correct choice because it acts as a central hub that connects multiple VPCs (spokes) to a shared services VPC, while using separate route tables to prevent inter-spoke communication. This allows the shared services VPC to be reachable from all other VPCs, but the route tables can be configured to not propagate routes between the spoke VPCs, enforcing the desired isolation.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
VPC Peering with route table customization
Why it's wrong here
VPC Peering is a one-to-one connection that does not support transitive routing, so a spoke VPC cannot use the hub as a relay to reach another spoke. Adding custom routes to the peering connections only controls traffic on that direct link; enabling spoke-to-spoke traffic would require a full mesh of peering connections, creating O(n²) connections and route entries that quickly become unmanageable at scale.
- ✓
AWS Transit Gateway with route tables
Why this is correct
AWS Transit Gateway provides a single managed hub that attaches to many VPCs and supports multiple route tables to control traffic flow. By associating each spoke VPC with a route table that contains only a route to the shared-services VPC attachment, you isolate spokes from each other while still granting them access to shared resources. This scales to hundreds of VPCs without the complexity of peering full meshes.
- ✗
Internet Gateway with security groups
Why it's wrong here
An Internet Gateway (IGW) is a horizontally scaled, redundant component that provides bidirectional Internet access for a VPC; it has no role in routing traffic between VPCs. Security groups act as stateful virtual firewalls at the elastic network interface level, filtering inbound and outbound packets, but they do not create routes or forward packets between separate VPCs. Deploying an IGW in every VPC cannot replace a connectivity solution like Transit Gateway or VPC Peering.
- ✗
VPC Endpoints
Why it's wrong here
VPC Endpoints (either gateway endpoints for S3/DynamoDB or interface endpoints powered by PrivateLink) create private connectivity from a VPC to AWS-managed services, not to another customer VPC. They use DNS entries and route table edge attachments for specific AWS service prefixes, and they do not function as inter-VPC routing components. Therefore, they cannot establish the hub-and-spoke topology required for the scenario.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CLF-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CLF-C02 exam.