ANS-C01 Network Design Practice Question
A company is designing a multi-Region Active-Active architecture with an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in us-east-1 and us-west-2. They want to route users to the nearest healthy endpoint using a custom domain name. Which AWS service should they use to accomplish this with the lowest latency and minimal operational overhead?
⚠ Common exam trap
AWS often tests the distinction between latency-based routing (which optimizes for actual network performance) and geolocation routing (which optimizes for geographic compliance or content localization), leading candidates to confuse the two when the requirement is 'nearest healthy endpoint' rather than 'route by location.'
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
✓
Use Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing with health checks.
Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing directs user traffic to the AWS region that provides the lowest latency for the end user, based on latency measurements between DNS resolvers and AWS endpoints. Combined with health checks, it automatically routes users away from unhealthy ALBs, meeting the requirement for nearest healthy endpoint with minimal operational overhead since it is a fully managed DNS service with no additional infrastructure to deploy.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Use Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing with health checks.
Why this is correct
Latency-based routing directs traffic to the region with the lowest latency, and health checks ensure availability.
- ✗
Use Amazon Route 53 geolocation routing policy.
Why it's wrong here
Geolocation routing routes based on the user's geographic location, not on latency.
- ✗
Use AWS Global Accelerator with endpoint groups in each region.
Why it's wrong here
AWS Global Accelerator is tempting as it routes user traffic over the AWS global network to the nearest healthy endpoint, optimising for lowest latency using static Anycast IP addresses. However, for routing users to the nearest healthy endpoint using a custom domain name, AWS Route 53's latency-based or geo-proximity routing policies are the primary mechanism. Global Accelerator improves network performance *after* DNS resolution, whereas Route 53 directly handles the intelligent DNS resolution for the custom domain. While Global Accelerator can front ALBs, Route 53 provides the specific DNS-level routing logic required for this scenario.
- ✗
Use Amazon Route 53 weighted routing policy.
Why it's wrong here
Weighted routing distributes traffic based on weights, not latency or health.
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Same concept, more angles
4 more ways this is tested on ANS-C01
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A company is designing a multi-region architecture with an active-active setup. They need to route traffic to the nearest healthy endpoint. Which AWS service should they use?
medium- A.Application Load Balancer (ALB)
- ✓ B.Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing
- C.AWS Global Accelerator
- D.Amazon CloudFront
Why B: Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing directs traffic to the AWS Region that provides the lowest latency for the end user, based on measurements between the user's DNS resolver and AWS endpoints. It also supports health checks, automatically excluding unhealthy endpoints from the routing pool, which enables an active-active multi-region architecture by routing each request to the nearest healthy endpoint. AWS Global Accelerator also routes to the nearest healthy endpoint but uses anycast IPs at the network layer, making it more suitable for optimizing TCP/UDP traffic rather than general DNS-level routing.
Variation 2. A company is designing a multi-region active-active architecture with an Application Load Balancer in each region. Which service can route traffic to the closest ALB based on latency?
medium- A.AWS Global Accelerator
- ✓ B.Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing
- C.Application Load Balancer cross-zone load balancing
- D.Amazon CloudFront
Why B: Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing directs traffic to the AWS region that provides the lowest latency for the end user, based on historical latency measurements between the user's ISP and each region. This makes it the correct choice for routing users to the closest Application Load Balancer in a multi-region active-active architecture.
Variation 3. A company is designing a multi-Region architecture with active-active failover for a web application. The application uses Application Load Balancers (ALBs) in two AWS Regions. Traffic must be routed to the closest healthy Region with automatic failover. Which AWS service should be used to route traffic?
medium- A.Network Load Balancer with cross-zone load balancing
- B.Amazon CloudFront with multiple origins
- ✓ C.Amazon Route 53 with latency-based routing and health checks
- D.AWS Global Accelerator
Why C: Amazon Route 53 with latency-based routing and health checks is the correct choice because it directs traffic to the AWS Region with the lowest latency for each user, and health checks automatically fail over to the next best healthy Region if an ALB becomes unhealthy. This satisfies the active-active failover requirement without introducing additional caching or anycast complexities.
Variation 4. A company is designing a multi-region active-active architecture with Amazon Route 53. The application is deployed behind Application Load Balancers (ALBs) in us-east-1 and eu-west-1. The company wants to minimize latency for users and provide automatic failover. Which routing policy should be used?
medium- A.Failover routing policy
- B.Geolocation routing policy
- ✓ C.Latency-based routing policy
- D.Weighted routing policy
Why C: Latency-based routing policy is the correct choice because it directs traffic to the AWS region that provides the lowest latency for the end user, which aligns with the requirement to minimize latency. Additionally, Route 53 automatically performs health checks on the ALBs; if one region's ALB becomes unhealthy, Route 53 routes traffic to the healthy region, providing automatic failover in an active-active architecture.
JA
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.