SOA-C02 Networking and Content Delivery Practice Question
A company is using Amazon Route 53 for DNS and wants to route traffic to multiple endpoints based on the geographic location of the user. Which routing policy should the SysOps Administrator use?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse geolocation routing with latency routing, assuming that lower latency correlates with geographic proximity, but latency routing uses actual network performance data, not geographic boundaries.
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
✓
Geolocation routing
Geolocation routing (Option A) is correct because it allows Route 53 to route traffic based on the geographic location of the DNS query's source IP address. This is ideal for scenarios where you need to direct users to specific endpoints based on their country, continent, or even US state, such as complying with data sovereignty laws or delivering localized content.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Geolocation routing
Why this is correct
Geolocation routing is the correct choice because Route 53 uses the geographic location of the user's DNS resolver to determine which record to return. You can create records for continents, countries, or US states and even specify a default record for users in unmatched locations. This enables location-based routing, such as directing users to regional endpoints or enforcing regional restrictions. However, the location is inferred from the resolver's IP address, so it is approximate rather than exact.
- ✗
Weighted routing
Why it's wrong here
Weighted routing does not consider user location at all; instead, it assigns a relative weight to each record and proportionally distributes traffic across them. This is useful for load balancing, A/B testing, or gradually rolling out new versions, but it cannot match users to endpoints based on where they are located. For a requirement to route based on geographic location, weighted routing is the wrong policy.
- ✗
Failover routing
Why it's wrong here
Failover routing is designed for high availability using an active-passive setup: Route 53 returns the primary endpoint when it is healthy, and automatically switches to a secondary endpoint if the primary fails a health check. This behavior is driven purely by health status, not by the requester's geographic location. Users in any region would be directed to the same healthy endpoint, so it cannot satisfy location-based routing requirements.
- ✗
Latency routing
Why it's wrong here
Latency routing chooses the endpoint that offers the lowest network latency for the user, which is often but not always correlated with geographic proximity. This policy optimizes performance and typically isn't based on a fixed geographic mapping; a European user could be routed to the US East if that region happens to have lower measured latency due to network paths. Since the business need is location-based routing rather than performance optimization, latency routing does not meet the requirement.
Visual reference
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every SOA-C02 question from scratch — 1,169 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SOA-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 SOA-C02 exam.