Fix for iphone/ipad wifi connection dropping problem with Spark fibre Huawei HG360b modem/router

There appears to be a known issue with iPhones and iPads dropping their wifi connection with the HG630b modem that Spark now supplies with new fibre broadband connections.

The wifi connects but loses connection everytime your device sleeps - auto-connection doesn't work and you usually have to manually reconnect to your wifi network again or you will be back on 3G or 4G using your mobile data. Sometimes it reconnects when you use mail or safari but an annoying reconnection window pops up to tell you it was successful.

The Spark technician suggested modem firmware upgrade, resetting iPhone network settings, changing wifi network name (SSID), modem channel, and changing security mode to WPA2-PSK. Unfortunately none of this resolved the problem. Other customers have had the modem replaced also without resolution. Spark is aware of the issue which only seems to affect iOS devices and not android etc.

After playing with a few more modem wifi settings I changed the WPA encryption from AES (default) to TKIP+AES. This seemed to fix the problem on all my devices immediately. I also turned off 'Enable WPS' at the same time, but I think is the WPA encryption that sorted the problem.

It is a significant nuisance without other known solution but this change seemed to work for me. I hope it helps someone else.