No network access after waking from sleep. Free online time management games. Discussion in 'MacBook' started by elfxmilhouse, Jul 7, 2015. My mac mini and 13' rMBP does not have this behavior.

I have a simple home network with 2 Macs, a Windows 7 PC, and an OpenELEC PC. I sometimes watch media using VLC from the. It is set in such a way that it goes to sleep when possible which is perfect and as it should be. When I turn on my Windows 7 PC, I browse the network and select the OpenELEC box. It tells me it can't connect, but after 5 or so seconds it starts working. This is because it has woken up and started being available on the network. When I connect to an already-woken OpenELEC box from my Mac (one Mavericks / one El Cap) it connects right away and can start working with files on the network.

But if the OpenELEC machine goes to sleep even if the Mac is busy using its files, it stays asleep. I've had VLC die horribly because the underlying network suddenly isn't there anymore. No amount of mucking about on the Mac seems to be able to get it to wake from a Mac. Windows > Linux will do it; Linux > Linux will do it; Mac > Linux won't do a thing. How do I get a Mac to tell a remote network machine that has an active data stream not to go to sleep in the middle of using it?