Which of the following statements about the IP forwarding process on a router is TRUE?

The fundamental task of an IP router is to forward packets toward their final destination. To do this, the router's forwarding plane examines the destination IP address in the header of each incoming packet. It then performs a longest-prefix match lookup for this address in its Forwarding Information Base (FIB), which is derived from the routing table. This lookup determines the appropriate next-hop and egress interface for the packet. The source address is not used for this primary forwarding decision.

A: The forwarding decision is based on where the packet is going (destination), not where it came from (source). C: The ARP table is not used for looking up MAC addresses; it is a cache mapping IP addresses to MAC addresses. D: The ARP table resolves the MAC address of the immediate next-hop router, not the final destination's MAC address.

- Nokia SR OS Router Configuration Guide, Release 21.x, "IP Router Configuration", section on "IP Forwarding". This section describes the forwarding process as being based on a destination IP address lookup in the FIB.

- Kurose, J. F., & Ross, K. W. (2016). Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (7th ed.). Pearson. Chapter 4, Section 4.2, "The Router", explains that forwarding tables are indexed by destination IP address.