A hybrid bridge can implement functionality for selectively populating its bridge tables based on preferred transmission routes to influence other network devices to transmit frames based on the preferred transmission routes. The hybrid bridge determines a preferred transmission route for communicating with each network device in the hybrid communication network. For each of the network devices, it is determined whether the hybrid bridge is part of the preferred transmission route associated with the network device. Depending on whether the hybrid bridge is part of the preferred transmission route to the network device and/or whether a network interface of the hybrid bridge is a transmit or a receive interface on the preferred transmission route, a local bridge table or a remote bridge table of the network interface can be populated with at least the address of a destination network device.