SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is migrating a legacy monolithic application to AWS. The application uses a proprietary binary protocol over TCP. The company wants to modernize the architecture using microservices while minimizing changes to the client. Which approach should the company use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often assume an Application Load Balancer or API Gateway can handle any protocol because of their advanced routing features, but they forget that ALB and API Gateway are strictly Layer 7 (HTTP/HTTPS) and cannot process raw TCP or proprietary binary protocols.
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 a Network Load Balancer with TCP listener and route traffic based on destination port to different target groups.
A Network Load Balancer (NLB) with a TCP listener can forward traffic based on destination port to different target groups, allowing the legacy client using a proprietary binary protocol over TCP to reach distinct microservices without any client-side changes. This preserves the existing TCP connection semantics and binary protocol, which an Application Load Balancer (HTTP/HTTPS only) or API Gateway (HTTP/REST) cannot handle.
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 a Network Load Balancer with TCP listener and route traffic based on destination port to different target groups.
Why this is correct
NLB can handle TCP traffic and route based on port to different services.
- ✗
Use AWS Global Accelerator with a TCP listener and endpoint groups for microservices.
Why it's wrong here
Global Accelerator works with TCP/UDP but does not route to microservices based on port within a single listener.
- ✗
Use an Application Load Balancer with path-based routing to direct traffic to separate microservices.
Why it's wrong here
ALB works at HTTP/HTTPS layer, not for binary TCP protocol.
- ✗
Use Amazon API Gateway with a custom authorizer to route requests to AWS Lambda functions.
Why it's wrong here
API Gateway requires HTTP/REST, not binary TCP.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SAP-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 SAP-C02 exam.