EMULATING PACKET FLOWS TO ASSESS NETWORK LINKS FOR SD-WAN

Some embodiments provide a novel method for assessing the suitability of network links for connecting compute nodes located at different geographic sites. The method of some embodiments identifies and analyzes sample packets from a set of flows exchanged between first and second compute sites that are connected through a first network link in order to identify attributes of the sampled packets. The method also computes attributes of predicted packets between the identified samples in order to identify attributes of each flow in the set of flows. The method then uses the identified and computed attributes of each flow in the set of flows to emulate the set of flows passing between the two compute sites through the second network link in order to assess whether a second network link should be used for future flows (e.g., future flows exchanged between the first and second compute sites).