Amazon Route 53 is the AWS Domain Name Service (DNS). Route 53 performs three main functions:
- Domain Registration – Route 53 allows you to register domain names.
- Domain Name Service (DNS) – Route 53 translates name to IP addresses using a global network of authoritative DNS servers.
- Health checking – Route 53 sends automated requests to your application to verify that it’s reachable, available, and functional.
You can use any combination of these functions. Route 53 benefits:
- Domain registration.
- DNS service.
- Traffic Flow (send users to the best endpoint).
- Health checking.
- DNS failover (automatically change domain endpoint if system fails).
- Integrates with Amazon Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), and Amazon CloudFront as endpoints.
Routing policies determine how Route 53 DNS responds to queries. The following table highlights the key function of each type of routing policy:
| Policy | What it Does |
|---|---|
| Simple | Simple DNS response providing the IP address associated with a name |
| Failover | If primary is down (based on health checks), routes to secondary destination |
| Geolocation | Uses geographic location you’re in (e.g. Europe) to route you to the closest region |
| Geoproximity | Routes you to the closest region within a geographic area |
| Latency | Directs you based on the lowest latency route to resources |
| Multivalue answer | Returns several IP addresses and functions as a basic load balancer |
| Weighted | Uses the relative weights assigned to resources to determine which to route to |