A cat5 splitter would be called a PASSIVE hub. That's what hubs do and that's all they do. I don't know if you can get a 2-port hub, or a y splitter or something,. A passive hub is just a one bunch of wires connecting all the other wires together.
A hub that has a power lead into it (99% you'll buy) simply acts as a repeater and boosts the signal. That's all hubs are and that is the definition of a hub. Those are called active hubs and 8 or more port active hubs are dirt cheap, that's why you don't see passive ones anymore.
Thats bullshit. Ever heard of the bus topology?
You can build a "hub" from a few cat5 connectors and any generic wire. It won't have the flashy lights, and it won't amplify the signal, but it will work the same otherwise.
That's exactly what a PUNCH DOWN BLOCK is for. It's a simple device that allows you to splice together a bunch of wires easily. They are commonly used to provide a patch panel for racks so that you can unplug wires in and out to make it easy to orginize. Another thing they are used for is provide wall outlets. Normally you have one wire patched to one outlet, but not nessicarally, but it's kinda ghetto otherwise.
Yes you can just tape the ends of a bunch of wires together and if you do it right it will work, but probably not all that well unless you go thru great pains to make sure that all the wires are tightly twisted right up to the point were you tape/solder them together. The main problem that you would run into is interference. The wires are twisted so that the electricty on each pair is going the oppisite direction and it creates a magnetic sheild from the twisted wires. Untwist them and you loose this sheild for the untwisted parts. Usually it's not a big deal, 10baset you can have a couple inches untwisted, 100baseT you probably only want a half inch untwisted, and 1000baseT you want absolutely as little as possible untwisted.
A trivia thing. You know what differenciates a cat5 vs cat5+ vs cat6? How tightly the wires are twisted.(other then maybe quality control on the wire's metal) The tighter the twist the more shielding effect you have, but also the more wire you use up per inch. So cat6 is more expensive because it uses up a lot more wire per foot then the generic cat5 stuff.
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There's no such thing, because you can't have two devices signalling over the same wire at the same time
apperiantly you don't remember how ethernet works to well. To the devices (unless you are using a switch as a switch(properly and not a expensive hub,), a router, or a bridge) on a LAN that just operates off of a hub or a wireless hub the entire topography seems to them as one gigantic wire. Therefore ALL the devices are signalling on ALL of the wires ALL of the time. This is what is known as a collision domain.
Only one device can actually signal at a time. And it's first come first serve. If one machine is transmitting then all the machines are receiving and none of them "speak" until the first one shuts up, then they have randomized timers once they get dead silence until another one begins transmitting. If 2 or more try to transmit at the same time this is known as a collision and they both shut up and go back on random timers and then retransmit. Hopefully now they don't do it at the same time and everything works.
If you have too many computers on one line or wire (even though in reality they are on a bunch of different wires) then you get too many collisions and then bandwidth suffers. So that's what bridges and switches and routers are for. (although they don't do it the same way) Lots of places today will have a actual switch for each room that has their own private wire from the switch to the computer. That way unless a computer is talking to another computer in that same room, or is doing a broadcast, then each computer has the full bandwith on the wire to the switch. That is of course if the switch is set up like that, lots are just used as sort of a complex hub.
