My house is a mix of cat5, 5E and two runs of 6. The two runs of 6 connect the two switches to the router. The majority is 5e, a few runs are some older teflon based cat5. I scored a few full boxes of teflon cat5 on Craigslist for 25 bucks -for 3 boxes- from some installer that had it kicking around collecting dust. It was labelled "Digital Equipment Corp" if that's any indication of how old it is. All my equipment is gigabit, and my service from comcast is "300 down and 10 up". On any given jack I test between 275-305 down and 12 up. I tend to think the DEC cable, while being older and rated as cat5, is probably overbuilt anyway. It has held up well. I've run tests between jacks with some software I downloaded and I get better than 900 in both directions from PC to PC. At those speeds, the hardware in the PC becomes the limiting factor, and not the cabling. I use Homeless Despot keystone jacks and plates, my switches are TP-link (2- 24 port switches), and my router is a TP-link. The switches I got used on flea bay, the router I bought new on Amazon. We use a ton of bandwidth in my house and this admittedly cheapskate setup has never let me down. The only issue I've had was the router overheated and shut down because my sister piled clothes on top of it. It has since been wall mounted so that can't happen again.
