AWS's DNS service, and the little more it does. Six questions on resolution, routing and health checks — CLF-C02, 2026 edition.
Try 6 free Amazon Route 53 questions in the exam's own style — every answer explained, no sign-up.
Straight to the 6 free questions ↓Route 53 is AWS’s DNS service, and on the CLF-C02 it is mostly one word — DNS — plus a little more. Attach that word to it and most questions resolve, because the distractors are always other networking or delivery services doing different jobs.
Amazon Route 53 translates domain names into the addresses of the resources that should answer them — the internet’s phone book. It is a global service, not tied to a Region. Beyond resolution, it can also register domains, so buying a domain and configuring its DNS can happen in one place.
Route 53 does more than return a fixed answer. It offers routing policies that decide where to send each user, and health checks that keep traffic away from endpoints that are down:
You do not need the full list memorised, but recognising “lowest latency” as latency-based, and “route around a failure” as failover with health checks, is fair game.
Route 53 is often set against CloudFront:
Names versus content. If a question is about a browser finding the right resource, it is Route 53; if it is about delivering content quickly worldwide, it is CloudFront. It also pairs with a load balancer, which Route 53 often points a domain at.
Answer each one before you reveal the explanation, and when you miss, read past the correct letter to why the other three fail. The distractors are always adjacent networking services — a load balancer or CloudFront offered where DNS belongs. Attaching “DNS” to Route 53 is the reflex the exam rewards, and the reasoning below builds it.
A user types a domain name into a browser. Which AWS service resolves that name to the correct resource?
Amazon Route 53 is AWS's Domain Name System (DNS) service — it translates a domain name into the address of the resource that should answer. Why not the others: CloudFront caches and delivers content, a load balancer distributes traffic across instances, and a VPC is a network. Resolving names is DNS, which is Route 53.
Besides resolving DNS, what else can Amazon Route 53 do?
Route 53 can also register domain names, so you can buy and manage a domain in the same place you configure its DNS. Why not the others: running servers is EC2, storing objects is S3, and managing keys is KMS. DNS plus domain registration is Route 53's scope.
Route 53 can stop sending users to an endpoint that is down and send them to a healthy one instead. What enables this?
Route 53 health checks monitor endpoints, and failover routing directs traffic to a healthy endpoint when one becomes unhealthy. Why not the others: an internet gateway connects a VPC to the internet, a security group filters instance traffic, and a NAT gateway provides outbound internet for private subnets — none of them handle DNS failover. Health checks plus failover routing is the answer.
Which Route 53 routing policy sends users to the AWS Region that gives them the lowest latency?
Latency-based routing directs each user to the Region expected to give them the fastest response. Why not the others: simple routing just returns a record with no logic, failover routing is about healthy versus unhealthy endpoints, and geolocation routing decides by the user's location rather than measured latency. Lowest latency specifically is latency-based routing.
How does Amazon Route 53 differ from Amazon CloudFront?
Route 53 is DNS — it tells the browser where to go. CloudFront is a content delivery network — it caches content near users so it loads fast. Why not the others: they are distinct, the descriptions are not reversed, and neither is a database. Resolving names versus delivering content is the difference.
Is Amazon Route 53 a global or a Regional service?
Route 53 is a global service, not confined to one Region — fitting for DNS, which serves users everywhere. Why not the others: you do not create it per Region, it is not limited to one Availability Zone, and it is not scoped to a VPC. Global, like IAM, is the correct scope.
That is exactly how every question in the course works — answer, explanation, why-not. The real set continues in the practice player: 10 free questions, no sign-up.
Continue with the 10 free questions →The exam does not test whether you recognise a term — it tests whether you can rule out three plausible answers under time pressure. That is what the explanations above are for, and there are 390 more questions built exactly like them.
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Updated for CLF-C02 (July 2026). The sample questions above are our own work in the style of the exam — not real exam items. The exam itself is set and marked by the certification body.