Let's suppose I have a building run on Cat6 cables. The lines are certified for Gigabit speeds. I have Gigabit switches. I am not going for 10Gbps anywhere.
Now, on my patch panels, I would prefer to use stranded Cat5e because they are thinner and more flexible than Cat6. Patch panels bulk up rather rapidly so I have had a much better experience with Cat5e.
The maximum cable length of my patch cables are 12 feet.
Given that my goal is a Gigabit network, is there any real-world difference in performance by patching over Cat5e instead of Cat6, over a Cat6 network? I'm not talking theoretical. I'm talking actual bandwidth transfer.
I have several people telling me there is, however I cannot understand why as Cat5e can also certify as Gigabit and we are only talking about very short distances.