RE: Ground potential differential at different ends of ethernet cable:
I think that possibly I friend a 10GbE PCI-E x4 NIC, as well as the onboard NIC, on my main rig, because of this issue.
I've got my NAS units and my "networking cluster", plugged into a power strip, plugged into a non-sine UPS, plugged into my kitchen outlet.
I've got my workstations, and my workstation aggregation switch(s), all plugged into my bedroom + living room circuit.
I now have my main workstation plugged into those switch(es), and then cabled to my networking cluster, but I used to have it (when I had the 10GbE-T card in it) plugged directly into the networking cluster (cable running over a doorway).