Introduction

If you’ve configured DNS before, chances are you’ve already used a form of simple routing without realizing it.
In this blogpost, we will use the most straightforward way to map a domain name to a single resource such as an EC2 instance, an elastic load balancer, s3 static website or any IP address.

With simple routing, it is so easy to configure as you are only mapping a domain name to one resource and therefore it is easy to configure and has low overhead. The downside is that it does not have any failover support since there is no health awareness and guarantee of retry on failure.
Unlike some of the other routing policies, it does not perform load balancing and the option to set up on different regions (no regional awareness)

So when should you use it?

Use simple routing when:

• You only have one server

• You are in a development or test environment

• You don’t need high availability

• You’re just getting started

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:

• A registered domain (or hosted zone in Route 53) - We will use the domain cloudproject.click

• A running resource (e.g., EC2 instance or ALB) - We will use 2 instances

  1. Instance 1 (US-North-California-Server): 13.52.214.xxx

  2. Instance 2 (US-North-Virginia-Server): 35.173.244.xxx

• Basic familiarity with the Amazon Route 53 console

Step-by-Step Implementation

Step 1: Navigate to Hosted Zone

• Go to Route 53

• Select your domain

• Open the hosted zone

Step 2: Create Record

Click Create Record

Step 3: Configure Record

Set the following:

• Record Name: simple (or leave blank for root domain)

• Record Type: A (IPv4 address)

• Value: Your resource IP (in my case, I will add the 2 ips)

• Routing Policy: Simple Routing

• TTL: 10 seconds (or add your own)

What Happens Under the Hood

This is called DNS round-robin, not failover.

When a user queries your domain:

• The client (browser/OS) decides which IP to use

• There is no health awareness

• There is no guarantee of retry on failure

Step 4: Save Record

Click Create records

Once the record is created, you should see it under Records

Step 5: Testing the Setup

You can test using:

nslookup simple.cloudproject.click

or just run the url (simple.cloudproject.click) on your browser

Summary

Now that you understand simple routing, you can see its limitations.

In real-world systems, we rarely rely on a single endpoint.

That’s where more advanced routing policies come in.

In the next post, we’ll explore Geolocation Routing, where traffic is routed based on user location.