Q: Mavericks: Wifi takes a while to connect after sleep

I was in Europe for work this summer and my mac air refused to play nice with major hotel wifi and hotel admin admitted there was a problem with macs that they had trouble fixing. This was a major issue for me, one that almost sent me out to buy a pc, but thankfully my iphone connected easily. It was supposedly fixed when I returned with a software reinstall, but I didn't have a chance to test it again in Europe. What I do know, is I have trouble connecting on wifi at a local restaurant with both iphone and air.  I'm not talking about slow, I mean, refuses to connect. To me, this is a bigger issue. Goes way beyond inconvenient.

I guess what I'm asking is could the difficulty connecting be part of a larger problem? Anyone been to Europe lately?

I'm going to go ahead and make a Time machine backup, and see if I can't roll this thing back to mt. Lion. I've been trying to decide if it's worth the time and the data to download it again. Does anybody know if there's a way to get mountain lion on disk and/or a way I can roll back to mountain lion without uninstalling all my programs?

Comcast only allows 300 gb/month and if I get into reinstalling everything I'm sure to go over this month. If anyone knows a way to backup adobe cc apps and Logic Pro and all it's instruments to an external disk too, that would be good, so I don't have to spend a big chunk of cap downloading those too.

I have the exact same problem as everyone else but as I previously reported, the problem does NOT occur when I am on an apple network with a router that has the new A/C technology.  As soon as I take my computer to a network that is using a b/n router, the problem comes right back.

I would like to know why this is, and I am curious if anyone else experiences the same thing in which the problem is dependent on the type of router technology.

I'm also wondering if this just isn't another one of Apple's slighted attemps to force new technology on their customers.

I tried everything in several of these threads, but what finally worked for me was deleting every single one of my saved WiFi passwords from the network preferences advanced wifi options page.

Not only did this solve my long time to connect after sleep, it also solved my 2 minute boot time issue.

Hope that helps.

I'm going to give it a go. Will report back.

Okay, I'm reporting back after visiting the Apple store: It works on their wifi. It doesn't work anywhere else; not the router at work, not the one at home. It appears between their Genius bars and their internal product testing environments, Apple's support systems aren't structured to notice this problem exists and have no apparent means to verify it within the Apple fishbowl. When referencing these forums, the tech stated that they couldn't use any of this as it's not, again, official Apple communication. It's an inherent flaw of their self-referencial ecosystem that means this will probably end up a class action item. Some outside pressure will have to be necessary to bring this issue to light. I'll be contacting my state attorney general later in the week.

Whar,

I think I posted about that before but it may have been a different forum on the same issue. Anyway, I noticed the exact same thing you described with the problem not happening at the Apple store on their network. I needed a new router anyway so I bought an Apple Air Port Extreme. That solved the problem for me as I no longer experience the wifi problem on the AirPort Extreme router, but as soon as I turn my old router back on or go to someone's house or a different network, the problem returns. I think the issue is the router technology. The new Air Port Extreme and probably whatever router they are using at Apple Store have the new AC technology (802.11ac). All the other routers where I experience the problem are still using N (802.11n). So I think in designing Mavericks to work with the latest and greatest wifi technology they missed something that makes it work on the older N technology.  What I don't understand is how Bluetooth factors into it.

FWIW, I've recently discovered that this problem goes away for me when I use only the 5GHz band of my dual band router. Using 5GHz (rather than 2.4GHz), even with BT enabled, I connect after sleep and restart without issue. Not a "fix" I know, but, Hmmm...

I've been following this thread.  I've had this problem for some months and I gather Apple has not responded to these problems and It sounds like a classic management decision not to support backward compatibility which means you can't expect your apple computer to work on older or other vendor network hardware. 

I'm not about to replace a working wireless router for the sake of Apple management performance goals.  I've talked to others about these problems and yep similar experiences.   Don't expect your Apple to work after an OS upgrade.  A good reason not to buy Apple ever again.

billkossack, I could not agree more!

I've had the same issues with my mid-2012 MacBook Pro.  It's driving me BONKERS!  Apple said it might be the WiFi connection in my computer.  When I had this thing dual-boot with Windows 7.  The Windows side was fine, the Mac side wasn't. 

I had the same problem a while back and had to completely wipe my mid-2012 MacBook Pro to factory default settings.  I upgraded to Mavericks, and it's acting wonky, again.

im not going to read through all responses but this is clearly a mavericks bug. I had this problem right out the box with a new imac. i hoped the upgrade to 10.9.2 would resolve, but no, it did not.

Ive found that closing apps connected to internet before going into sleep resolves the problem. Its obviously the os. Ive had no trouble with my ipad and no trouble with the router. I'm on an airport. Typical apple not properly testing os properly for this kind of annoying crap.

Hello Everybody

Same problem here. Brand new Mac Book Air. The BT off seems to work in my case.

Hope Apple fix it. I bough this MBA thinking that a MAC is better than PC. Certainly it is the same. A lot of problems and waiting for Bug fixes.

Thanks

Probably I've found the reason of this annoying problem and I've found a solution too (at least it worked for me).

Thanks to people of this thread that found that the wifi problem is connected to the bluetooth activation. They gave me the right idea that I followed to find the solution.

The problem is due to the "Order of services" in the Networking Preferences (sorry for my translation but my OS is in italian so I'm guessing how the option menu could be in english). If the DUN Bluetooth or PAN Bluetooth service is BEFORE the Wi-Fi service, after waking up your Mac, your Wi-Fi will reconnect very very slowly or will never reconnect automatically at all.

But if you change the order of your Networking Services and you put the Wi-Fi at the first place, your Wi-Fi will reconnect almost immediately (it worked for me!).

To change the Networking Service Order go to Preferences --> Network, press the Gear Wheel in the lower left of the window, choose the "Set Service Order..." option. A new window will appear with different kind of connections.

Drag your Wi-Fi connection to the top. Press OK, and then Apply.

Restart your Mac and verify by yourself if the Wi-Fi problem has been solved.