[Mic92]

You would probably prefer the netlink interface these days over the old ioctl interface to configure bridges. But for an introduction the older one is probably easier to explain.

[hueving]

Any reason netlink would be preferable if you're only making these calls <10 per minute?

[vbernat]

You have access to far more parameters through Netlink than through ioctl. For bridges, this includes VLAN tagging, flood behavior, filtering behavior, per-port MAC learning, etc. Any recent development on bridges for Linux is only accessible through sysfs and netlink.