Wifi disconnects after sleep and takes long time to reconnect with Mavericks

Since upgrading to Mavericks whenever my MacBook Air goes to sleep (if I leave it idle) the wifi disconnects and it can take up to a minute to reconnect when it wakes.

Basically what happens is, as soon as it wakes I have no internet connection, the WiFi indicator is pulsing, meaning it is searching for networks, but it takes ages to find any, then after some time, usually between 30 secs and a minute all the networks in my building pop up and it instantly at that point reconnects to my WiFi network.

It is incredibly frustrating I was so used to the Mac being an instant on tool, now it takes longer to get on the internet than booting up my windows PC.

Any ideas what might have caused this?

Posted on Oct 28, 2013 4:08 AM

483 replies

Jan 22, 2016 5:00 AM in response to Paul Lipps

I have also noticed that there seems to be a relationship with Dropbox. The wifi will show as connected but Dropbox will show as constantly trying to connect. A sure sign that the internet is working is that the Dropbox icon shows it is connected. Quitting Dropbox seems to have fixed the problem though I can't say why it should work.

Jul 16, 2016 5:13 AM in response to seb101

I have the same problem without my mac (Mac Mini Server 2010) going to sleep. After a while it simply turns off or disconnects, even though my system never sleeps...

Dec 17, 2016 8:18 AM in response to seb101

I had the same problem, tried a lot of things - none of which worked for long. Replacing the PRAM battery immediately solved the problem, there's a useful guide on iFixit how to do it yourself.

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Wifi disconnects after sleep and takes long time to reconnect with Mavericks