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25Gbps is not insane if you are using commodity hardware. If you are buying any sort of datacenter switch, most likely it will be 25G/100G already. 10G/40G is dead tech.

Now, 400G uplinks are still pretty reserved, but 100G (and its' breakout, 4 x 25G) is common as dirt now.

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Are there any small (affordable, energy-efficient) switches with those speeds? Say, around 8-24 of the 25G lanes? You can buy a dual-port SFP28 card for 250 EUR by using the QNAP "accessory"[0] which is just a ConnectX-6 Lx EN with a fan to work in the NAS systems they market it for.

This is quite efficient due to the PCIe4 support not hogging many lanes (half of the 8 lanes can be enough depending on usage), but to use the speed one needs a 25G switch. Is the cheapest way just an Ryzen with 5 of these directly attached to the CPU, and running routing on the CPU via DPDK?

[0]: https://geizhals.eu/qnap-lan-adapter-qxg-25g2sf-cx6-a2609459...

MikroTik is a market leader in barebones 10Gbit/sec routers. However, multi-port 25Gbit/sec is very expensive! This model is 2800 USD and has 12x 25Gbit/sec and 2x 100Gbit/sec ports: https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2216_1g_12xs_2xq

I struggle to find a 10Gbps USB NIC for my laptop.

Go with surplus commercial hardware and be judicious about when you turn your equipment on.

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