Im trying to think of a more pleasing way to sort my cables out, and Im wondering if its safe to have a bit of Cat5 outside the house? I assume it would be fine regarding the rain etc, but what about direct sunlight or the cold?

I would think there is different qualities of cat5 for sure there is shielded and non shielded ones, cold and rain should be no problem but i am not so sure about UV though. Usually PVC I think which can take UV fairly well.

Could sunlight be tackled by running it through some hosing or similar?

I run a cable from my room outside the house to my brothers room. Its been there for at least 6 months, maybe more, and weve never had any problems.

go for it, ive got a 3ish year old install with a Cat5e running outside clipped to fence, distance is about 75m.  Was supposed to be a temp job, but its not packed up so its stayed in use.  

Looking into a bit more it seems like it is usually PVC and PVC can take a fair share of SUN Shielded is to recommend though.

Cool, thanks.

As long as it shielded for long distance runs I;d say go for it.

could be a good idea to put a drip loop on the bottom of the outside part of the cable

If you are worried about UV just shove it inside some cheap conduit or tubing, the result might look a bit better too and will help protect it from accidental damage.

Yep defo gonna try the drip loop idea, might try and get hold of some tubing or something too.

It will be less than 10m, so Im hoping the cable Ive got at the minute will do the job.

CAT5 will be fine outside.

I dropped a Cat5e cable out the window of the 1st floor of a student house and back in the ground floor (windows were knackered, doors were solid as, path of least resistance FTW). Never gave any trouble that I know of.

If you want to give it a little extra protection, or bury it... then I have found feeding it through a hose pipe, a quick method of adding protection, and maybe making it a bit more discrete.

Just use proplex PCCAT5EP cable, its double shielded with kevlar reinforcement with a black UV resistant plastic. OK, its expensive, but its bloody good stuff (its hard to damage it even with a freshly sharpened letherman!).

In all seriousness, normal cat5 inside a hosepipe will be fine.