Doing a 'hard reset' of wifi state without restarting I live in a large building with a lot of routers, and a functioning router right next to my room, but the connection is extremely slow. When I brought the issue to IT, they told me my computer was attempting to connect to a router that was much further away, while ignoring the closer one. (All of these routers are part of the same WiFi network.)

I can fix the issue by restarting the computer, but it comes back if I bring it outside and back into the building. Toggling wifi on and off doesn't help. I'm running the latest version of OSX and I don't have anything special installed.

Is there some state my laptop is maintaining that is being cleared on a restart? If so, how can I clear it manually without having to restart?
If I understand correctly, your laptop is prioritizing one Wi-Fi Access Point over another, even though that one is further away. You can change the priority of Access Points by finding the following:

System Preferences ==> Network ==> Advanced

You will see a list of networks your laptop has previously connected to, and you can rearrange the list via drag &amp; drop, with the first item in the list being of the highest priority.

Once you are done, click OK then Apply and restart your Wi-Fi card to get the desired results.