The BEST way to determine the next hop of a packet is to check the:

Link state refers to a routing protocol type (e.g., OSPF) that describes the state of links, not a lookup structure for per-packet forwarding decisions.

A routing table contains entries that map destination network prefixes to next-hop IP addresses and outgoing interfaces. When a packet arrives, the router performs a longest-prefix match against the routing table to find the correct next hop. This is the direct, definitive source for next-hop determination.

Routing metrics are values used by routing protocols to select the best path when building the routing table, but they are not directly consulted per packet.

Convergence is the process by which all routers in a network agree on topology; it is a state, not a data structure used for forwarding.