New home so builder home-ran cables to outside demarc box. We had him homerun an extra Cat5 in two rooms with the hope of connecting them together so PC in one room could connect to router I have in other room. How can I connect the 2 outside cables together (without a hub)? Thanks.

I'm not clear on this question. Why do you want to connect two outside cables? Why do you have two outside cables rather than one?Why do you not want to involve a cheap $40 hub? Outline what you are envisioning and I can give you a clearer answer. Regards. D

well ,if its the same (on both) 4 string cable type -you can connect color to color and covering with tape . -remove the plastic from the wire :) Hub is the best .

Simply twisting the wires together & covering with tape is obviously NOT the correct approach (It will seriously degrade the cabling's properties.) Your best bet is to install a RJ45 plug on each cable and plug each of these into a female-to-female connector. Do this inside a weatherproof enclosure of some type (PVC or Metal OUTDOOR electrical box.) Keep in mind that being outdoors, the connections will still deteriorate over time due to changes in temperature & humidity. It doesn't take much to degrade a cat 5 cable...untwisting too much at the connections, bending too sharply, etc will all make data transfer rates reduced. Your best bet would be to get the connection inside, into a climate-controlled environment, preferably without ANY splices or connections. Sorry for the bad news, but this question should have been asked BEFORE running the cable, not afterwards. Hope this helps. Dave

D- I have a hub in one of the rooms. The problem is that the builder would only run the Cat5 from the room in which the jack was located to the outside of the house to connect to the phone company box. No running cables between rooms. So, while the hub is in one room, the only way I can get the cable to it is by going to the electrical box and joining it with the extra cable I had dropped from the room with the hub -- creating one, long cable. Hope that helps.