ANS-C01 Latency-based routing Practice Question
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?
⚠ Common exam trap
The ANS-C01 exam often tests the distinction between DNS-based routing (Route 53 latency routing) and network-layer anycast routing (Global Accelerator). Candidates might mistakenly choose Global Accelerator because it also routes to the nearest endpoint via anycast, but Route 53 latency routing is correct for scenarios that do not require static IPs or TCP/UDP optimization.
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
✓
Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing
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.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Application Load Balancer (ALB)
Why it's wrong here
ALB is regional and cannot route across regions based on latency.
- ✓
Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing
Why this is correct
Route 53 latency-based routing directs traffic to the region with the lowest latency for the user.
- ✗
AWS Global Accelerator
Why it's wrong here
AWS Global Accelerator uses the global AWS network to route traffic to the nearest healthy endpoint based on latency, health, and proximity. It is a network-layer anycast service that improves performance and reliability for TCP/UDP traffic. However, the question specifically asks for routing traffic via DNS, and Global Accelerator is not a DNS-based service; it uses anycast IP addresses. Therefore, Route 53 latency-based routing is the correct choice.
- ✗
Amazon CloudFront
Why it's wrong here
CloudFront is a content delivery network, not for routing to application endpoints.
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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.