SOA-C02 Networking and Content Delivery Practice Question
A company wants to distribute content with low latency to users globally. The content is static and stored in an S3 bucket. Which AWS service should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse AWS Global Accelerator (which optimizes network path for dynamic traffic) with CloudFront (which caches static content at the edge), leading candidates to pick Global Accelerator for static content distribution.
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 CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) that caches static content at edge locations worldwide, reducing latency for users by serving data from the nearest edge. It integrates directly with S3 buckets as an origin, providing low-latency distribution of static content without requiring any changes to the S3 bucket configuration.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Application Load Balancer
Why it's wrong here
Application Load Balancers distribute incoming traffic across multiple targets such as EC2 instances, but they do not cache or store content. They operate at the request level and forward every request to the origin, so there is no latency benefit for repeated downloads. This makes them unsuitable for distributing content with low latency to users.
- ✗
AWS Global Accelerator
Why it's wrong here
AWS Global Accelerator improves performance for TCP/UDP traffic by routing requests over the AWS global network from edge locations, but it does not cache content. It is designed for dynamic, non-cached traffic where the origin must respond, so it cannot reduce latency for static content that could be served from a cache. For low-latency content distribution, you need a CDN that caches at the edge.
- ✓
Amazon CloudFront
Why this is correct
Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network that caches static and dynamic content at edge locations worldwide, ensuring users receive data from the nearest edge to minimize latency. It works with origins like S3, EC2, or on-premises servers, and offloads repeated requests from the origin by serving cached copies. This directly satisfies the requirement to distribute content with low latency to users.
- ✗
S3 Transfer Acceleration
Why it's wrong here
S3 Transfer Acceleration speeds up the upload of files to S3 buckets by using AWS edge locations and optimized network paths, but it does not accelerate downloads or delivery of content to end users. It only affects the transfer into S3, not the distribution out to clients. Therefore, it is not a solution for low-latency content distribution, which is better achieved with CloudFront.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
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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.