More than three months into my trial of ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line, the system that squeezes broadband data rates down conventional copper telephone wires) and the quarterly bill for advanced charges arrives from BT Openworld.

It is £119.97, or £39.99 per month, excluding VAT. Despite the initial hassles getting connected (see the first DSL Diary in FT Telecoms, January 17), this must count as exceptional value, as it has transformed my use of the internet and perceptions of the medium.

The net's usefulness for networking and communicating on a global scale is enhanced. And - at least when accessed via ADSL or any of the other broadband technologies - the net is all about tremendous savings in time and reductions in inconvenience.

January 23

Particle physics gave birth to the net - not sales of knickers and CDs. Cern, the European particle physics laboratory in Geneva, can produce a raw data rate output equivalent to a mile-high stack of CD-Roms per second, says Andrew Cameron, veteran planet hunter at St Andrews University in Scotland. It was the need to handle this volume of data which gave rise to the great global networking revolution.

Cameron suggests I view www.heavens-above.com. The site is little short of incredible - and much more enjoyable to use with a fast connection. Tell it where you are in the world - a million locations are listed - and it tells you when various celestial objects will be visible overhead, down to the minute.

Objects include the International Space Station, or a visible flash from one of the Iridium satellites.

Eager 'Life-on-other-Earth-ers,' meanwhile, can go to http://ast.star.rl.ac.uk/ darwin, to look at pictures of the Darwin Mission, the five-satellite, planet-hunting scheme proposed by the European Space Agency, that just might go into orbit in 2014.

February 7

A day out to see how professionals master the internet. Meet Stephen Heppell, of Anglia Polytechnic University's Ultralab in Chelmsford, the centre (ultralab.ac.uk) devoted to pioneering e-learning initiatives, including Tesco's SchoolNet, said to be the world's largest educational e-learning programme.

Ultralab also hosts dozens of closed community sites. One, solely for kids excluded from school, allows them to chat together, swap horror stories about teachers, discuss their future with other Excludeds. And if they want there's a button marked 'Help'. But otherwise they're left alone.

Next, there's a site exclusively for headteachers of religious schools. This, says Prof Heppell, is by far the most active - and boisterous - among the group. "The discussion last November on how they should handle Halloween - was a classic," he said. Proof that networking works best - and brings forth the most honesty, frankness and transparency - especially when anonymity is added.

February 14

And speaking of childish behaviour, infantilia reigns supreme here on St Valentine's Day. Log on to Blue Mountain.com, the comprehensive e-greeting cards site, and click on to My Videos. There are short videos, for birthdays, greetings and congratulations, you can send off.

In an attempt to be original, I load up a Valentine video of my Dalmatian dog, compress, encode and upload it on the VideoShare server - which neatly ensures that my hard drive space isn't gobbled up. I despatch it to several unsuspecting ladies, who reply. Inevitably they love the dog, but not its owner!

Still, more than 400,000 people have watched videos on the Blue Mountain site, and it won't be long before we use such software routinely to send wedding and holiday videos to friends and relatives.

February 20

Get a call from Stephen Whitelaw, boss of Glasgow-based Actis Technology, whose software forensically investigates the 'naughty side' of the internet. "There's something very interesting our software has found," he says. I log on to www.safe-for-kids.net, the utterly safe portal for children, with links to Cartoon Network, McDonald's, Disney et al, a symbol of clean-cut America.

Then, at Mr Whitelaw's suggestion, I added a symbol and a few letters and found that someone has successfully integrated a sumptuously long list of teen-porn images - all within the main site. The exercise reveals just how easy it is, even for well-monitored websites, to be hacked.

February 26

Graphics, the bane of my life, slow the net needlessly to a crawl. Who needs them, for Heaven's sake? I ask friends to suggest alternative careers for graphics designers, and then ask Betty to find an alternative. She does.

Zero in on www.segmentis.com, the software invented by that brilliant and kindly mathematician Andrew Bangham, at the University of East Anglia. Download the software, slot in your digital photo, and bit by bit the image filter removes various layers of detail, and transforms the pic into a wondrous Impressionist image - "without the usual loss of focus, colour or edge".

With practice, the effects are magical. Just see how a photo of the Venice waterfront, shown on the website, is diluted into a balmy watercolour scene so beloved of the English. "Often the most unprepossessing photo can be worked into a good picture," says Dr Bangham. Utilise this software, and surfers will think you spent four years at art school.

March 8

Time for genealogy. I trawl through the Washington Family Genealogy Forum, as my parents have always insisted that the Gibsons and the Washingtons - the family of the first US President that is - have intermarried over three hundred years. Oh really?

Betty does the legwork. Skimming through the voluminous chat forums, until she tracks down a John Washington, one of the last male descendants to bear the surname, and a man who has devoted his life to his famed forebear's family history. "I've been looking for the Gibson connection for 30 years," he growls at me - when we eventually meet in London.

But are we truly related? With his wife, we dine at his London club. Halfway through the main course she lifts up her unfinished plate of food, and blithely tips the scraps on to her husband's - without asking, without batting an eyelid. He continues talking as if nothing has happened. "We are most definitely related," I declare, "because this is exactly what my three sisters do to me!" That's the power of the internet for you - it's all about networking.

The next instalment of Marcus Gibson's DSL Diary will appear in the next FT Telecoms Review on May 16