Values specific for geolocation records - Amazon Route 53
Routing policyRecord nameRecord typeTTL (seconds)Value/Route traffic toLocationU.S. statesHealth check Record ID

Values specific for geolocation records

When you create geolocation records, you specify the following values.

Routing policy

Choose Geolocation.

Record name

Enter the name of the domain or subdomain that you want to route traffic for. The default value is the name of the hosted zone.

Note

If you're creating a record that has the same name as the hosted zone, don't enter a value (for example, an @ symbol) in the Name field.

Enter the same name for all of the records in the group of geolocation records.

For more information about record names, see Record name.

Record type

The DNS record type. For more information, see Supported DNS record types.

Select the same value for all of the records in the group of geolocation records.

TTL (seconds)

The amount of time, in seconds, that you want DNS recursive resolvers to cache information about this record. If you specify a longer value (for example, 172800 seconds, or two days), you reduce the number of calls that DNS recursive resolvers must make to Route 53 to get the latest information in this record. This has the effect of reducing latency and reducing your bill for Route 53 service. For more information, see How Amazon Route 53 routes traffic for your domain.

However, if you specify a longer value for TTL, it takes longer for changes to the record (for example, a new IP address) to take effect because recursive resolvers use the values in their cache for longer periods before they ask Route 53 for the latest information. If you're changing settings for a domain or subdomain that's already in use, we recommend that you initially specify a shorter value, such as 300 seconds, and increase the value after you confirm that the new settings are correct.

If you're associating this record with a health check, we recommend that you specify a TTL of 60 seconds or less so clients respond quickly to changes in health status.

Value/Route traffic to

Choose IP address or another value depending on the record type. Enter a value that is appropriate for the value of Record type. For all types except CNAME, you can enter more than one value. Enter each value on a separate line.

You can route traffic to, or specify the following values:

  • A — IPv4 address

  • AAAA — IPv6 address

  • CAA — Certificate Authority Authorization

  • CNAME — Canonical name

  • MX — Mail exchange

  • NAPTR — Name Authority Pointer

  • PTR — Pointer

  • SPF — Sender Policy Framework

  • SRV — Service locator

  • TXT — Text

For more information about the above values, see common values for Value/Route traffic to.

Location

When you configure Route 53 to respond to DNS queries based on the location that the queries originated from, select the continent or country for which you want Route 53 to respond with the settings in this record. If you want Route 53 to respond to DNS queries for individual states in the United States, select United States from the Location list, and then select the state under the Sublocation group.

For a private hosted zone, select the continent, country, or sub-division closest to the AWS Region that your resource is in. For example, if your resource is in us-east-1, you can specify North America, United States, or Virginia.

Important

We recommend that you create one geolocation record that has a value of Default for Location. This covers geographic locations that you haven't created records for and IP addresses that Route 53 can't identify a location for.

You can't create non-geolocation records that have the same values for Record name and Record type as geolocation records.

For more information, see Geolocation routing.

Here are the countries that Amazon Route 53 associates with each continent. The country codes are from ISO 3166. For more information, see the Wikipedia article ISO 3166-1 alpha-2:

Africa (AF)

AO, BF, BI, BJ, BW, CD, CF, CG, CI, CM, CV, DJ, DZ, EG, ER, ET, GA, GH, GM, GN, GQ, GW, KE, KM, LR, LS, LY, MA, MG, ML, MR, MU, MW, MZ, NA, NE, NG, RE, RW, SC, SD, SH, SL, SN, SO, SS, ST, SZ, TD, TG, TN, TZ, UG, YT, ZA, ZM, ZW

Antarctica (AN)

AQ, GS, TF

Asia (AS)

AE, AF, AM, AZ, BD, BH, BN, BT, CC, CN, GE, HK, ID, IL, IN, IO, IQ, IR, JO, JP, KG, KH, KP, KR, KW, KZ, LA, LB, LK, MM, MN, MO, MV, MY, NP, OM, PH, PK, PS, QA, SA, SG, SY, TH, TJ, TM, TW, UZ, VN, YE

Europe (EU)

AD, AL, AT, AX, BA, BE, BG, BY, CH, CY, CZ, DE, DK, EE, ES, FI, FO, FR, GB, GG, GI, GR, HR, HU, IE, IM, IS, IT, JE, LI, LT, LU, LV, MC, MD, ME, MK, MT, NL, NO, PL, PT, RO, RS, RU, SE, SI, SJ, SK, SM, TR, UA, VA, XK

North America (NA)

AG, AI, AW, BB, BL, BM, BQ, BS, BZ, CA, CR, CU, CW, DM, DO, GD, GL, GP, GT, HN, HT, JM, KN, KY, LC, MF, MQ, MS, MX, NI, PA, PM, PR, SV, SX, TC, TT, US, VC, VG, VI

Oceania (OC)

AS, AU, CK, FJ, FM, GU, KI, MH, MP, NC, NF, NR, NU, NZ, PF, PG, PN, PW, SB, TK, TL, TO, TV, UM, VU, WF, WS

South America (SA)

AR, BO, BR, CL, CO, EC, FK, GF, GY, PE, PY, SR, UY, VE

Note

Route 53 doesn't support creating geolocation records for the following countries: Bouvet Island (BV), Christmas Island (CX), Western Sahara (EH), and Heard Island and McDonald Islands (HM). No data is available about IP addresses for these countries.

U.S. states

When you configure Route 53 to respond to DNS queries based on the state of the United States that the queries originated from, select the state from the U.S. states list. United States territories (for example, Puerto Rico) are listed as countries in the Location list.

Important

Some IP addresses are associated with the United States, but not with an individual state. If you create records for all of the states in the United States, we recommend that you also create a record for the United States to route queries for these unassociated IP addresses. If you don't create a record for the United States, Route 53 responds to DNS queries from unassociated United States IP addresses with settings from the default geolocation record (if you created one) or with a "no answer" response.

Health check

Select a health check if you want Route 53 to check the health of a specified endpoint and to respond to DNS queries using this record only when the endpoint is healthy.

Route 53 doesn't check the health of the endpoint specified in the record, for example, the endpoint specified by the IP address in the Value field. When you select a health check for a record, Route 53 checks the health of the endpoint that you specified in the health check. For information about how Route 53 determines whether an endpoint is healthy, see How Amazon Route 53 determines whether a health check is healthy.

Associating a health check with a record is useful only when Route 53 is choosing between two or more records to respond to a DNS query, and you want Route 53 to base the choice in part on the status of a health check. Use health checks only in the following configurations:

  • You're checking the health of all of the records in a group of records that have the same name, type, and routing policy (such as failover or weighted records), and you specify health check IDs for all the records. If the health check for a record specifies an endpoint that is not healthy, Route 53 stops responding to queries using the value for that record.

  • You select Yes for Evaluate Target Health for an alias record or the records in a group of failover alias, geolocation alias, latency alias, IP-based alias, or weighted alias record. If the alias records reference non-alias records in the same hosted zone, you must also specify health checks for the referenced records. If you associate a health check with an alias record and also select Yes for Evaluate Target Health, both must evaluate to true. For more information, see What happens when you associate a health check with an alias record?.

If your health checks specify the endpoint only by domain name, we recommend that you create a separate health check for each endpoint. For example, create a health check for each HTTP server that is serving content for www.example.com. For the value of Domain Name, specify the domain name of the server (such as us-east-2-www.example.com), not the name of the records (example.com).

Important

In this configuration, if you create a health check for which the value of Domain Name matches the name of the records and then associate the health check with those records, health check results will be unpredictable.

For geolocation records, if an endpoint is unhealthy, Route 53 looks for a record for the larger, associated geographic Region. For example, suppose you have records for a state in the United States, for the United States, for North America, and for all locations (Location is Default). If the endpoint for the state record is unhealthy, Route 53 checks the records for the United States, for North America, and for all locations, in that order, until it finds a record that has a healthy endpoint. If all applicable records are unhealthy, including the record for all locations, Route 53 responds to the DNS query using the value for the record for the smallest geographic region.

Record ID

Enter a value that uniquely identifies this record in the group of geolocation records.