It shouldn't matter so much, but it does. When my home network isn't working, I'm not working. And I makes me very, very tense. My emotional relationship to computer networking is both unhealthy and I suspect increasingly typical of the wired consumer: I want all my networks (cable, mobile, telephony, and especially data) to be working all the time, and if they're not, I experience it as a physical loss similar to the explosive removal of a favourite kidney.

I'm not sure precisely when we crossed the line that divided the pre-networked world from the wired world, but I can remember very clearly when I realised that we'd arrived in this new and happy place. The office I was working in at the time had lost internet connectivity, and everyone simply downed tools: people went for coffee, took an early lunch, or walked over to gossip with their colleagues, as though a factory whistle had gone off, signalling that it was time to down tools.

There was a common sense feeling that if the network wasn't working, we weren't working. It was like a snow day. Pretty much all work now aspires to the status of e-mail, and all goofing off happens on Facebook, so the network now contains multitudes. All our lives are there.

I've made my peace with this new dependency at work, but was alarmed to discover that I've re-created the same monkey on my back at home. If my wireless network is down, so am I. I can't check the million things I check when I go online – urgent new headlines, the digital hell of the Ikea catalogue, film times, a book title, the weather in Sligo. And it ruins my mood: when the home network is down, a black cloud settles over the house, as though I were a devoted football fan smarting under the pain of a particularly awful defeat.

The misery of a downed network is two-fold: first you can't get on with anything. Even worse, you face a miserable couple of hours messing around with DHCP and WDS, obsessively resetting your wireless router and wi-fi bridges in one of those miserable, unending technology black holes into which I'm quite sure some people fall and never return. Networking faults are complicated, with multiple dependencies, and many possible points of failure. At some point in diagnosing the fault you almost always need to go online to download a patch or check a message board, and your brain explodes, because of course if you could go online, YOU WOULDN'T NEED TO DOWNLOAD THE PATCH OR CHECK THE MESSAGE BOARD IN THE FIRST PLACE. This is not a happy place to be.

I use Apple's Airport Extreme Wi-Fi gear, and like most networking gear, when it's working it's a magic carpet that I take completely for granted. I continue to be amazed at the fundamental mystery that enables me to stock check a furniture warehouse in Wembley from my living room sofa, or read today's New York Times, free, in the bath. However, the true glory of the power of the networked home only becomes apparent on those terrible days when the whole thing goes down. Of course you can pick up the phone book. Of course you can ring directory enquiries and speak to someone on the phone. Of course you can go outside and buy a copy of Time Out at the local newsagents. That's not the point. When you want to go online, you want to go online, and tedious, analogue communication processes like 'looking things up' or 'talking to people' just don't cut it. You want the magic carpet back.

This morning, after three hours spent meticulously checking network attributes on my routers and wi-fi devices I finally got the damn thing to work, and no words in the language can describe the sweet peace that descended upon the house. My team had won an important sporting fixture, and I raised the cup high. I can join many networks, and surf to any destination from any room in the house. There is streaming digital music in the kitchen, and Facebook in the shed. There is instant messaging in the front garden – just because there can be. Again, it's a double pleasure. Not only can I enjoy the fruits of the networked style of life: but I don't have to think about 802.11/G, AirPort admin utility and WPA/WPA 2 personal security attributes until the next time the wretched thing breaks down and turns me into Homer Simpson. May your router always maintain high connectivity speeds – and may your wi-fi never, ever go down.

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Michael Parsons helped to launch The Industry Standard magazine, and was the launch Editor of CNET.co.uk