Routing Policies: Simple, Weighted, and Latency
Use simple routing for single resources, weighted routing for A/B traffic splits, and latency routing to serve users from the closest region.
Overview of Route 53 Routing Policies
Route 53 routing policies determine how DNS queries are answered when multiple resource record sets share the same DNS name. The policy tells Route 53 which IP or DNS name to return and under what conditions. Choosing the right routing policy is one of the most frequently tested topics on the SAA-C03 exam.
Available routing policies: Simple, Weighted, Latency-based, Failover, Geolocation, Geoproximity, and Multivalue Answer. Each serves a different use case. Most can be combined with health checks for automatic failover.
Simple Routing Policy
Simple routing maps a DNS name to one or more IP addresses (for A records) or another hostname (for CNAME/ALIAS). When a single value is configured, Route 53 always returns that value. When multiple values are configured, Route 53 returns all values in a random order, and the client picks one.
Simple routing is the default policy and is best for single-resource setups where you don't need health checks, traffic splitting, or geographic differentiation. It does not support health checks—if the resource is unhealthy, Route 53 still returns its address.
# Create a simple routing record
aws route53 change-resource-record-sets \
--hosted-zone-id Z1234567890 \
--change-batch '{
"Changes": [{
"Action": "CREATE",
"ResourceRecordSet": {
"Name": "api.example.com",
"Type": "A",
"TTL": 60,
"ResourceRecords": [
{"Value": "10.0.0.1"},
{"Value": "10.0.0.2"}
]
}
}]
}'All lessons in this course
- Hosted Zones and DNS Record Types
- Routing Policies: Simple, Weighted, and Latency
- Failover and Geolocation Routing
- Health Checks and DNS Failover