SOA-C02 Networking and Content Delivery Practice Question

A company has deployed a web application across multiple AWS regions and wants to use Amazon Route 53 to direct users to the region with the lowest latency. Which routing policy should the SysOps administrator use?

⚠ Common exam trap

Many candidates confuse 'geolocation' (based on user's physical location) with 'latency' (based on actual network performance), assuming that the closest geographic region always has the lowest latency, which is not true due to network routing and peering differences.

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

✓

Latency routing policy

Latency routing policy is correct because it directs user traffic to the AWS region that provides the lowest network latency for the end user. Route 53 measures latency between the user's DNS resolver and each region's edge location, then responds with the IP of the region that has the lowest latency. This is ideal for multi-region deployments where the goal is to minimize response time.

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

✓
Latency routing policy
Why this is correct
The latency routing policy selects the AWS region that gives the requesting user the lowest network latency by comparing real-time latency measurements from the client's DNS resolver to each configured regional endpoint. It is the only policy among these that makes a routing decision based on actual network path performance rather than a static geographic or weighting rule, so it matches the requirement to route users to the fastest-performing region for the web application.
✗
Geolocation routing policy
Why it's wrong here
The geolocation routing policy bases its decision on the geographic origin of the DNS query, such as the continent, country, or US state that the resolver's IP address maps to. It is designed for scenarios like content localization, legal restrictions, or language selection, and it does not factor in current network congestion or hop-by-hop latency, so users could be sent to a nearby region that is currently slower than a farther region.
✗
Geoproximity routing policy
Why it's wrong here
The geoproximity routing policy routes traffic based on the physical distance between the user's DNS resolver and the AWS region endpoints, optionally adjusted by a 'bias' value that expands or shrinks the geographic footprint of a region. A positive bias pulls more traffic to a region and a negative bias pushes traffic away, but this remains a distance/location calculation independent of real-time measured latency; thus it cannot guarantee selecting the best-performing region.
✗
Weighted routing policy
Why it's wrong here
The weighted routing policy assigns a numeric weight to each resource record set and answers DNS queries by randomly selecting a record in proportion to its weight, allowing fine-grained control over traffic splitting among regions or endpoints. It is frequently used for blue/green deployments, A/B testing, or shifting load gradually, but it has no awareness of latency or network health and could send a large percentage of traffic to a slow or unhealthy region if the weights are configured that way.

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SOA-C02 Networking and Content Delivery Practice Question

Why each option matters

Option-by-option breakdown

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