To be serious , I think the real issue is that Zed doesn ' t understand the difference between a string and a byte sequence , at least in Python . So he ' d need to admit he was wrong , which I ' m not personally convinced he ' s capable of . Instead he doubles down on the Python 3 strings are unusable , when what he , hopefully , means is there ' s no interop between strings and bytes without converting one to the other . The reality is that for most programmers , there ' s a whole set of problems that vanish , never to be seen again . <| sep |> if you are just using gigabit networking almost anything is good enough . if you plan to add some sfp cards you will be looking for more faster hardware . Odds are your internet connection is less then gigabit so if you are not using the box as a 10 gbe switch you are golden .