DOP-C02 Resilient Cloud Solutions Practice Question
Which TWO AWS services can be used to distribute incoming traffic across multiple AWS resources in different Availability Zones within a single region?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates think only Elastic Load Balancers (like ALB) can distribute traffic across AZs, but AWS Global Accelerator also performs this function at the network layer, and the question asks for TWO services, so both ALB and Global Accelerator are correct.
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 Global Accelerator
AWS Global Accelerator uses the AWS global network and Anycast static IP addresses to route incoming traffic to the optimal endpoint, such as an Application Load Balancer or EC2 instance, across multiple Availability Zones within a single region. It improves performance and reliability by directing traffic to the healthiest endpoint and automatically rerouting in case of failure, making it a valid service for distributing traffic across AZs.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
AWS Global Accelerator
Why this is correct
AWS Global Accelerator uses static anycast IPs at AWS edge locations to route traffic over the AWS global network to endpoint groups, which can contain NLB or ALB endpoints in multiple Availability Zones. It performs health checks and weight-based traffic distribution across endpoints, so incoming TCP/UDP connections are deliberately distributed across AZs rather than being resolved once by DNS. This edge-to-backbone path also improves latency while keeping the same IP addresses during failover.
- ✗
Amazon Route 53
Why it's wrong here
Amazon Route 53 is an authoritative DNS service; it resolves a name to an IP address but does not intercept or forward any packets after resolution. Although routing policies like latency-based or weighted records can point clients to different AZs, client-side DNS caching means changes and failover are not immediate, and the service never inspects or reroutes active connections across AZs. Consequently, it is a resolution mechanism, not a data-plane traffic distributor.
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Amazon CloudFront
Why it's wrong here
Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network that caches static and dynamic content at edge locations and serves it directly to viewers from the nearest edge, reducing origin load. Its purpose is to accelerate object delivery, not to load-balance raw network traffic across AZs; when CloudFront reaches an origin, it simply resolves the origin's DNS and opens connections, without applying AZ-level distribution weights or health-based routing. Thus, it does not distribute incoming edge traffic across Availability Zones.
- ✗
AWS Direct Connect
Why it's wrong here
AWS Direct Connect is a private physical or logical network connection from your on-premises router to AWS, using BGP for routing. It establishes L2/L3 path redundancy via multiple virtual interfaces, but it is a connectivity service that carries traffic into your VPC, not a component that decides which AZ receives each request. A Direct Connect can terminate at separate locations/AZs, yet it does not actively balance or distribute incoming traffic among endpoints.
- ✓
Application Load Balancer
Why this is correct
Application Load Balancer operates as a regional Layer 7 service that evaluates each HTTP/HTTPS request and forwards it to healthy targets in multiple Availability Zones. It automatically scales per AZ, performs health checks, and supports target group weighting, so it explicitly distributes live request traffic across AZs within a region. Unlike DNS or CDN services, ALB is in the data path for every connection, making it a direct AZ traffic distributor.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DOP-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 DOP-C02 exam.