Question 665 of 302
SAA-C03 Design Secure Architectures Practice Question
A website serves mostly cacheable images, CSS, and JavaScript from an ALB. Users in Europe and Asia report slower page loads, and the ALB receives far more requests than expected. The team also wants text assets compressed automatically. Which change is the best first step?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers think scaling the ALB (Option A) or using latency-based routing (Option B) will solve performance issues, but they overlook that caching and compression at the edge (CloudFront) directly address both latency and request volume without requiring backend changes.
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
✓
Place Amazon CloudFront in front of the ALB and enable compression and caching.
CloudFront is the correct first step because it acts as a CDN that caches cacheable content (images, CSS, JS) at edge locations close to users in Europe and Asia, reducing load on the ALB and improving page load times. It also supports automatic compression of text assets (e.g., via gzip or Brotli) without requiring backend changes, directly addressing the team's requirement for compressed text assets. By offloading requests from the ALB, CloudFront reduces the number of requests hitting the origin, solving the 'far more requests than expected' issue.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Increase the ALB size and add more target instances behind it.
Why it's wrong here
Scaling the ALB and application servers may help capacity, but it does not reduce round-trip distance for global users or cache static content closer to them. The origin would still receive most requests, so latency and origin load remain higher than necessary. This treats the symptom rather than the architecture problem.
When this WOULD be correct
When the website experiences high CPU/memory utilization on the ALB and backend instances, and the primary bottleneck is compute capacity rather than request volume or latency, scaling out the ALB and targets is appropriate.
- ✗
Use Route 53 latency-based routing to send users to the nearest ALB.
Why it's wrong here
Latency-based routing can direct users to different regional endpoints, but it does not provide edge caching for static assets. Every request would still traverse to an origin, which means the ALB continues to handle far more traffic than needed. It also adds complexity that is unnecessary when a caching CDN can solve both latency and load reduction.
When this WOULD be correct
In a scenario where you have multiple ALBs deployed in different AWS regions and users experience high latency because they are being routed to a distant region, Route 53 latency-based routing would be the correct answer to direct each user to the closest ALB, reducing latency.
- ✓
Place Amazon CloudFront in front of the ALB and enable compression and caching.
Why this is correct
CloudFront is the right choice because it caches static content at edge locations close to users, reducing latency and lowering the number of requests that reach the ALB. It also supports compression for text-based assets such as CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. This improves both performance and origin offload without changing the application logic.
- ✗
Replace the ALB with an NLB to reduce latency for web requests.
Why it's wrong here
An NLB is excellent for TCP and ultra-high throughput use cases, but it is not the best service for HTTP content optimization, path-based behavior, or caching static assets. The workload described is web content delivery, where edge caching and compression matter more than load-balancer protocol flexibility. NLB also does not reduce origin requests the way a CDN can.
When this WOULD be correct
If the question required handling millions of UDP or TCP connections with ultra-low latency and no need for HTTP features (e.g., a real-time gaming server or IoT device traffic), replacing an ALB with an NLB would be appropriate.
Option-by-option analysis
Why each answer is right or wrong
Understanding why wrong answers are wrong — and when they would be correct — is what separates a 750 score from a 900. The SAA-C03 exam frequently reuses these exact scenarios with slightly different constraints.
✓Place Amazon CloudFront in front of the ALB and enable compression and caching.Correct answer▾
Why this is correct
CloudFront is the right choice because it caches static content at edge locations close to users, reducing latency and lowering the number of requests that reach the ALB. It also supports compression for text-based assets such as CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. This improves both performance and origin offload without changing the application logic.
✗Increase the ALB size and add more target instances behind it.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
The issue is not ALB capacity or backend scaling; it's about excessive requests and latency due to lack of caching and compression. Increasing ALB size and instances doesn't reduce request volume or compress assets.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
When the website experiences high CPU/memory utilization on the ALB and backend instances, and the primary bottleneck is compute capacity rather than request volume or latency, scaling out the ALB and targets is appropriate.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates often default to scaling solutions when they see performance issues, without diagnosing the root cause (lack of caching/compression).
✗Use Route 53 latency-based routing to send users to the nearest ALB.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
Route 53 latency-based routing directs users to the nearest ALB, but the problem is that the ALB receives far more requests than expected due to cacheable content not being cached. Latency routing alone does not reduce ALB load or compress text assets automatically.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
In a scenario where you have multiple ALBs deployed in different AWS regions and users experience high latency because they are being routed to a distant region, Route 53 latency-based routing would be the correct answer to direct each user to the closest ALB, reducing latency.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may think that reducing network latency by routing users to the nearest ALB will solve the slow page loads, but they overlook that the core issue is excessive requests hitting the ALB due to lack of caching and compression, which latency routing does not address.
✗Replace the ALB with an NLB to reduce latency for web requests.Wrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
An NLB does not support caching, compression, or HTTP-level features like image/CSS/JS optimization; it operates at Layer 4 and cannot reduce request volume or compress text assets.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
If the question required handling millions of UDP or TCP connections with ultra-low latency and no need for HTTP features (e.g., a real-time gaming server or IoT device traffic), replacing an ALB with an NLB would be appropriate.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may think NLB reduces latency because it is faster at the transport layer, but they overlook that the bottleneck here is cacheable content and compression, which require Layer 7 features.
Analysis generated from the official SAA-C03blueprint and verified against question context. The “when correct” sections are what AI assistants cite when candidates ask “what’s the difference between these options?”
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Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
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