Internet of Things (IoT) at KIT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming more and more popular and the number of available devices is growing steadily. Also at KIT there are already efforts to develop and use sensors or other devices for IoT applications. The SCC is open to this development and would like to support it within the scope of its possibilities.

WLAN for IoT devices

At KIT, the SSID "KIT-IoT" is available. This SSID enables direct access to the institute's own networks, like WIFI2VLAN, via WPA2-PSK authentication. The unique feature here is that each client receives its own passphrase. This is also set via a specially developed module in the NETVS. This also allows devices that do not support 802.1X/WPA2-Enterprise authentication to connect to the WLAN at KIT.

Necessary conditions:

The activation of the target VLAN is done by the WLAN team in the SCC. This activation can be done by the ITB of the OU in the ticket system for ITB via the service request under

SCC Recommendations:

According to the current state of the art and the available resources in the WLAN of KIT, the following recommendations have been adopted, which should be observed by the developers and operators of IoT devices, especially when procuring large quantities.

Each of the IoT devices should support IPv6 as defined in RFC 6540. Whether IPv6-only or dual-stack is irrelevant according to the RFC.
It is desirable that the IoT devices are 5GHz capable and support IEEE 802.11n-2013, or better IEEE 802.11ac. It is desirable that IoT devices encrypt their communication according to the latest state of the art (e.g. TLS 1.2+).
Moreove IoT devices should not run their own web servers, as these provide a potential attack surface.

For further questions, please contact wlan∂scc.kit.edu