What is the role of a route table in a cloud VPC?

• A. It stores firewall rules and security group settings.
• B. It defines how traffic flows between subnets and to external destinations, governed by route entries.
• C. It assigns IP addresses to instances.
• D. It encrypts data in transit within subnets.

Answer: (B)

A route table in a cloud VPC determines how traffic is directed. Each subnet is linked to a route table, and each route entry specifies a destination CIDR block and a target (such as an internet gateway, NAT gateway, VPN gateway, or another network interface). When a resource in a subnet sends traffic, the cloud consults the route table to decide where to send that traffic next, shaping how traffic flows between subnets and to external destinations. This is how you enable public subnets with direct internet access (0.0.0.0/0 to an internet gateway) and private subnets that reach the internet only through a NAT, or how you route traffic to on‑prem networks or other VPCs. Firewall rules and security groups control whether traffic is allowed or denied, but they don’t determine where traffic goes. IP address assignment is handled separately (typically by DHCP), and encryption in transit is achieved with cryptographic protocols, not routing.