> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://karansingh.gitbook.io/aws-saa-c02/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://karansingh.gitbook.io/aws-saa-c02/route53/routing-policies.md).

# Routing Policies

## Simple routing policy

* Use for a **single resource that performs a given function for your domain**, for example, a web server that serves content for the example.com website.<br>

* Simple routing lets you configure standard DNS records, with **no special Route 53 routing such as weighted or latency**.

* If you choose the simple routing policy in the Route 53 console, you **can't create multiple records that have the same name and type**, but you **can specify multiple values in the same record**, such as multiple IP addresses.<br>

* If you **specify multiple values in a record**, Route 53 **returns all values to the recursive resolver in random order**, and **the resolver returns the values to the client** (such as a web browser) that submitted the DNS query.
  * The **client then chooses a value and resubmits the query**.<br>

* You **cannot attach health checks to a simple routing policy**.<br>

## Failover routing policy

* Failover routing **lets you route traffic to a resource when the resource is healthy or to a different resource when the first resource is unhealthy**.

## Geolocation routing policy

* Geolocation routing **lets you choose the resources that serve your traffic based on the geographic location of your users, meaning the location that DNS queries originate from**.<br>

* **For example, you might want all queries from Europe to be routed to an ELB load balancer in the Frankfurt region**.

* When you use geolocation routing, you **can localize your content and present some or all of your website in the language of your users**.<br>

* You can also **use geolocation routing to restrict distribution of content to only the locations in which you have distribution rights**.

## Geoproximity routing policy

* Use when you want to **route traffic based on the location of your resources** and, **optionally, shift traffic from resources in one location to resources in another**.<br>
* You can also **optionally choose to route more traffic or less to a given resource by specifying a value**, known as a bias.
  * A **bias expands or shrinks the size of the geographic region from which traffic is routed to a resource**.

## Latency routing policy

* Use when you have resources in multiple AWS Regions and you want to **route traffic to the region that provides the best latency**.

## Multivalue answer routing policy

* Use **when you want Route 53 to respond to DNS queries with up to eight healthy records selected at random**.<br>
* Multivalue answer routing **lets you configure Amazon Route 53 to return multiple values, such as IP addresses for your web servers, in response to DNS queries**.<br>
* You **can specify multiple values for almost any record, but multivalue answer routing also lets you check the health of each resource, so Route 53 returns only values for healthy resources**.<br>
* It's **not a substitute for a load balancer**, but the ability to return multiple health-checkable IP addresses is a way to use DNS to improve availability and load balancing.

## Weighted routing policy

* Use to **route traffic to multiple resources in proportions that you specify**.<br>
* Weighted routing **lets you associate multiple resources with a single domain name (example.com) or subdomain name (acme.example.com)** and **choose how much traffic is routed to each resource**.<br>
* This can be useful for a variety of purposes, including **load balancing** and **testing new versions of software**.