A robotics company is building a public load balancer in AWS to ensure encrypted, seamless communication with backend services. The load balancer must route traffic based on query strings to different target groups. Which solution meets these requirements?

An Application Load Balancer (ALB) is the correct choice because it operates at Layer 7 (the application layer) and supports advanced routing features like query parameter-based routing. This allows the ALB to inspect the query string of an incoming request and route it to different target groups accordingly, fulfilling the requirement. ALBs also natively integrate with AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) for easy attachment of SSL/TLS certificates, ensuring encrypted communication. Network Load Balancers (NLBs) operate at Layer 4 (the transport layer) and do not support query parameter-based routing; they route based on IP address and port. Gateway Load Balancers (GWLBs) are designed for deploying, scaling, and managing third-party virtual appliances, not for direct client-to-application traffic routing with query string inspection. Importing certificates into IAM is a valid method for some services, but ACM is the preferred and simpler way to manage certificates for ALBs.