ANS-C01 cheat sheet

Exam at a glance

Domain weightings

How much of the exam each domain covers. Spend your study time in proportion — the heavier the domain, the more questions you'll see.

Key terms

Amazon VPC

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is a logically isolated virtual network in AWS where you define subnets, route tables, and gateways. ANS-C01 covers advanced VPC design, IP addressing at scale, and inter-VPC connectivity.

Transit Gateway

AWS Transit Gateway is a regional network hub that interconnects VPCs and on-premises networks through a single gateway with route tables. ANS-C01 covers it as the backbone of large-scale and hybrid network designs.

Direct Connect

AWS Direct Connect is a service that provides a dedicated private network connection between on-premises and AWS. ANS-C01 covers virtual interfaces (VIFs), link aggregation groups (LAG), and resilient hybrid connectivity.

Site-to-Site VPN

AWS Site-to-Site VPN is an IPsec VPN connection between on-premises networks and AWS over the internet. ANS-C01 covers it as a hybrid-connectivity option, often as backup to or combined with Direct Connect.

AWS PrivateLink

AWS PrivateLink provides private connectivity to AWS and third-party services using interface VPC endpoints, keeping traffic off the public internet. ANS-C01 covers it for securely exposing and consuming services across VPCs and accounts.

Route 53

Amazon Route 53 is AWS's scalable DNS and domain service with public and private hosted zones, routing policies, and health checks. ANS-C01 covers advanced and hybrid DNS design, including Route 53 Resolver endpoints.

Route 53 Resolver

Amazon Route 53 Resolver is the service that handles recursive DNS for VPCs and enables hybrid DNS through inbound and outbound resolver endpoints. ANS-C01 covers it for resolving names between on-premises and AWS.

Gateway Load Balancer

The Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) is an Elastic Load Balancing type that transparently inserts third-party virtual appliances, such as firewalls, into the traffic path. ANS-C01 covers it for traffic inspection and network security architectures.

Network Load Balancer

A Network Load Balancer (NLB) is a Layer 4 load balancer that handles high-throughput, low-latency TCP/UDP traffic and can present static IPs. ANS-C01 covers it alongside ALB and GWLB for network-tier load balancing.

AWS Network Firewall

AWS Network Firewall is a managed, stateful network firewall and intrusion-prevention service for VPCs. ANS-C01 covers it, with security groups and NACLs, for securing and inspecting network traffic.

VPC Flow Logs

VPC Flow Logs capture metadata about IP traffic to and from network interfaces in a VPC. ANS-C01 covers them, with Reachability Analyzer and CloudWatch, for monitoring and troubleshooting network connectivity.

Reachability Analyzer

VPC Reachability Analyzer is a tool that tests and diagnoses network connectivity between resources by analyzing the network path without sending traffic. ANS-C01 covers it for troubleshooting routing and security-group/NACL issues.

AWS Global Accelerator

AWS Global Accelerator is a networking service that routes user traffic over the AWS global network to the optimal endpoint using anycast static IPs. ANS-C01 covers it alongside CloudFront for improving performance and availability.

CloudFront

Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network that caches content at edge locations to reduce latency and offload origins. ANS-C01 covers it as an edge-networking and security service, integrating with WAF and Shield.