ANS-C01 Network Design Practice Question
A company has a global application deployed across multiple AWS Regions. They use an Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing policy to direct users to the closest region. Recently, users in Asia are experiencing high latency even though traffic is being directed to the nearest region. The network team reviews the latency measurements and notices that the Route 53 latency values are based on the region where the resources are hosted, but the actual application performance is poor. What is the most likely cause?
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
✓
The application in the Asian region is overloaded, causing increased response times.
Route 53 latency-based routing measures the network latency between the user and the AWS region where the resources are hosted, not the application response time. If the application in the Asian region is overloaded, it will respond slowly, causing high latency for users even though traffic is correctly routed to the nearest region. Option A is incorrect because health checks would cause failover to another region, which would not explain high latency when traffic still goes to Asia. Option B is incorrect because DNSSEC adds minimal overhead and does not significantly impact latency. Option D is incorrect because anycast is used by Route 53 for DNS query resolution, not for the routing policy itself; the latency policy already directs users to the region with the lowest network latency.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The Route 53 health checks are failing, causing traffic to be routed to a different region.
Why it's wrong here
Health checks affect routing but not the latency measurement itself.
- ✗
The company has not enabled DNSSEC, causing additional DNS resolution time.
Why it's wrong here
DNSSEC adds a small overhead but not significant latency.
- ✓
The application in the Asian region is overloaded, causing increased response times.
Why this is correct
Latency routing only optimizes network path; application slowdown still causes high latency.
- ✗
The Route 53 latency routing policy is not using anycast, causing suboptimal routing.
Why it's wrong here
Route 53 uses anycast for its DNS servers, but that is separate from latency routing.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This ANS-C01 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 ANS-C01 exam.