[romshark]

> Is there something I'm missing? Why does this workstation need a ~$1000 motherboard and a ~$1000 Xeon CPU? Those two components alone cost more than either of my computers and seem like severe overkill.

Yes, as stated in the article, it probably could have been cheaper. But this setup is supposed to:

1. Run simulations and benchmarks of/on entire SCION topologies with multiple ASes.

2. Potentially grow beyond 25 Gbit/s into the 200 Gbit/s ranges (and more?).

3. Be available to me ASAP (can't wait months for it to arrive from China).

4. Potentially be used for CI/CD performance regression testing in the future.

The budget allowed a bit of headroom for the future.