SOA-C02 Networking and Content Delivery Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

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

• ✓

  Amazon CloudFront

  Why this is correct

  Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network that caches both static and dynamic content at edge locations geographically closer to users, reducing latency and offloading requests from the origin EC2 instances. It also terminates SSL/TLS at the edge, so decrypted traffic is forwarded over the AWS network to the origin, reducing the TLS handshake and encryption workload on the application servers. Additionally, CloudFront supports origin shielding, connection keep-alives, and multiple SSL/TLS protocols to further optimize delivery and reduce origin load.

• ✗

  AWS Global Accelerator

  Why it's wrong here

  AWS Global Accelerator is a network-level service that uses static anycast IPs to route user traffic over the AWS global backbone to the closest healthy endpoint, reducing internet latency, jitter, and packet loss. However, it does not cache content; every request is still proxied to the origin EC2 instance, and although it can terminate TLS at the edge, it cannot serve cached responses or offload application-layer processing from the origin the way a CDN does. Therefore, while it improves network path efficiency, it is not a substitute for CloudFront's caching and origin offload.

• ✗

  AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall)

  Why it's wrong here

  AWS WAF is a security service that inspects HTTP(S) requests against rules to block SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and other web exploits, but it does not cache content, accelerate delivery, or terminate SSL at the edge. It can be integrated with CloudFront as a layer of filtering before requests reach the origin, but its purpose is protection, not performance. Thus, WAF would not address the stated need to reduce latency or offload the EC2 instances.

• ✗

  Amazon Route 53 with Latency Based Routing

  Why it's wrong here

  Amazon Route 53 with Latency Based Routing (LBR) only handles DNS resolution at the DNS level, directing users to the AWS region that is predicted to have the lowest latency from the user's location. It does not cache content, terminate SSL, or alter the path the TCP/HTTP request takes after DNS resolution completes; the user's client still connects directly to the chosen EC2 origin. LBR is a DNS-level approach that can improve regional selection, but it cannot offload origin servers or reduce per-request latency for a single application endpoint.