The EIA/TIA guideline is:
100 meters total end-to-end
COMPOSED OF
90 Meters of solid conductor cabling "in the wall"
WITH
*Up to* 5 meters of "jumper cordage" at either end.
Jumpers are made with stranded conductors and impose more attenuation, are more susceptable to noise, and have less impedednce consistancy along the length.
The "In the Wall" cabling is solid conductor cabling ... it doesn't make good jumpers because flexion and torsion will displace the conductors more easily (which can corrupt the impedence and other transmission characteristics) ... and breaks quicker if you bend it enough.
So, 90 meters of cabling In the Wall, up to 5 meters of flexible jumper at either or both ends = 100 meters.
Note1: Running longs lengths of stranded conductor is "bad" too much attenuation, too much noise, more crosstalk
Note2: The EIA / TIA "rules" are guidelines, "Rules of Thumb" ... if you follow the guidelines, your system is almost certainly going to work ... if you meet the specs (attenuation, crosstalk (NeXT, FeXT, Power Sum, etc) ... then cable length is irrelevent *IF* you can hit the specs for the given category rating.
Note3: These are generic specs for copper structured cabling, regardless of the Category (3, 4, 5, 5e, 6 {and beyond}).
Note4: Don't assume that Shielded Cat{anything}(sometimes called Screened UTP) is better than unshielded. Unless the shielded / screened cabling is terminated properly, you might as well be using barbed wire fencing ... improperly terminated shielded / screened is worse than plain ol' phone wire. UTP and modern Ethernet/ Fast Ethernet / GigE transceivers are much better these days and can handle common mode noise (like 50/60 Hz) easily. There are very few circumstances where shielded cabling is needed.
Hope this helps ...
Good Luck
Scott
