> The reason I ask is that I often push the limits of current gigabit ethernet distances and have found that actual limits are much shorter than theoretical limits meaning some network cards have a hard time negotiating at full speed and often fall back to 100mb unless forced

Does it have problems on single unbroken cable like that or it just has few patch-panels along the way ? IIRC the standard was for 100m unbroken cable, not the usual of device -> cable -> patchpanel -> cable ->patchpanel -> cable -> patchpanel -> cable -> device