I've done full length (100m per spec) runs using home grade equipment and it worked well enough to feed 6 hi-def video streams for several hours and no glitches. Cable run from a gibbon enclosure to front of zoo for an event that normally happens in/through the zoo but the little slut monkeys made a baby unexpectedly and gave birth 3 days before the event, so they didn't want the crowds coming through. Had cables gaffer taped to trees, all sorts of crazyness to make it work. But it worked.

I guess the good news is I did order a cable tester.

I was playing with my new cable tester yesterday and connected it to the garage run. The lights were all over the place. I must have been color blind when I connected the jack in the garage (and when I double checked), because it wasn't even close. I guess you can wire up the jacks wrong and they will still work.

I also found patch cables that i made that were working, but wires were crossed.

Most newer GbE physical layer devices (the piece of silicon that drives the copper cable at both ends of the wire) are capable of automatically detecting cable pair P/N reversals and pair/pair swaps just because cable pullers can't build cables correctly :D

It's also been at least 10 years since I've seen even a consumer grade switch that wasn't capable of establishing a valid link across at least 150 meters of decent CAT 5 or 5e cable. Length should not be an issue for you.

Gary