SOA-C02 Networking and Content Delivery Practice Question
A company wants to allow its employees to access internal applications using a custom domain name (app.example.com) that resolves to an internal ALB. Which AWS service should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse DNS resolution with load balancing or content delivery, mistakenly choosing the ALB (which handles traffic distribution but not name resolution) or CloudFront (which is for public content delivery), instead of recognizing that Route 53 is the DNS service required to map a custom domain to an internal resource.
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
Amazon Route 53 is the correct choice because it is a DNS service that can resolve a custom domain name (app.example.com) to an internal Application Load Balancer's DNS name. By creating a private hosted zone associated with the company's VPC, Route 53 can provide internal DNS resolution without exposing the ALB to the internet, which meets the requirement for internal application access.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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AWS Global Accelerator
Why it's wrong here
AWS Global Accelerator uses static anycast IP addresses to route traffic over the AWS global network, but it does not perform DNS resolution or natively support custom domain name mapping. To use a custom domain with Global Accelerator, you still need a DNS service like Route 53 to translate the domain name to the accelerator's IP addresses. Its purpose is network-layer traffic optimization, not domain name resolution.
- ✗
Application Load Balancer
Why it's wrong here
An Application Load Balancer provides an automatically assigned DNS name (e.g., my-load-balancer-1234567890.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com) but it cannot serve as an authoritative DNS service for custom domains. The ALB does not process DNS queries or host zone files; instead, you must configure Route 53 (or another DNS provider) to create a record—often an alias record—that points your custom domain to the ALB's DNS name. Thus, the ALB is a traffic distributor, not a DNS resolver.
- ✓
Amazon Route 53
Why this is correct
Amazon Route 53 is a scalable and authoritative DNS service designed specifically to resolve custom domain names. It lets you create hosted zones, manage records (A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, etc.), and route traffic to AWS resources such as load balancers, CloudFront distributions, or IP addresses. Route 53 also supports alias records that integrate natively with other AWS services, making it the standard choice for mapping internal or external domains to application endpoints.
- ✗
Amazon CloudFront
Why it's wrong here
Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network that serves cached content via globally distributed edge locations, and it provides a default domain like d123.cloudfront.net. While CloudFront can be associated with a custom domain, it does not provide DNS resolution or manage authoritative DNS records for that domain. You must use Route 53 (or another DNS provider) to create a DNS record that points your custom domain to the CloudFront distribution's domain name.
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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.