If you receive an error in your console window that says something like: afs: Lost contact with server 18.72.0.4 it means that some server that is providing AFS service to your workstation is down or is "off the net" momentarily. Your workstation has noticed that the server went down and is informing you of this. A workstation keeps track of the status of every AFS server it knows about, so if the workstation reports a single server down it is likely that your work will not be affected. If you attempt to access a file on the server which is down, you will get an error message like: filename: Connection timed out When the server comes back, you will receive a message in your console window that looks like this: afs: Server 18.72.0.4 back up