ASP.NET MVC - Determine Client's Computer Name

Question

I am building an intranet site that will display different lists based on the computer name because different computers are in different areas, is there a way (within a controller or model) to determine the client's computer name?

I have tried system.environment.machinename but that only returns the name of the server, any other ideas?

Answer 1

The only way I know of to inspect the client is through the ServerVariables collection on the Request object (should be available for MVC code).

See http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtech/092298-3.shtml for more information. REMOTE_HOST and REMOTE_ADDR look like candidates.

Answer 2

I think you are better off using one of these methods to tie a user to a location:

• a cookie that is set once the user self-selects their location
• having the user login to the site so that you can track them uniquely that way
• remembering user by IP address

There is no way of ensuring remote hostnames are unique. The same issue occurs with IP because of proxies, dynamic IP, etc., but I think it will be a little more reliable. Also, you can do geolocation by IP address.

Answer 3

No. The client's computer name is not available in any way on the server. This is the nature of the http request-response. You only can have its IP address.

A workarounds could be to retrieve machine on the client from Flash/Silverlight (I doubt JavaScript) and put in into cookie which is available on the server with each request. But there is a whole stack of issues with this approach.

Answer 4

You could use the Request.LogonUserIdentity.Name property, which returns "ComputerName\Username", and then split the value on '\'.

Answer 5

Dup question, check this out also, besides the answers here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/922476/is-there-a-way-to-read-the-clients-machine-computer-name-from-the-browser

Answer 6

Try this:

string name = Request.UserHostName;

Answer 7

Here's an IE-only solution. It works in IE8, with multiple security warnings.

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
   var ax = new ActiveXObject("WScript.Network");
   document.write(ax.UserName + '<br />'); //logged in account name
   document.write(ax.ComputerName + '<br />'); //Windows PC name
</script>

Answer 8

I got it working using the following:

string IP = Request.UserHostName;
string compName = CompNameHelper.DetermineCompName(IP);

code from compnamehelper:

public static string DetermineCompName(string IP)
    {
        IPAddress myIP = IPAddress.Parse(IP);
        IPHostEntry GetIPHost = Dns.GetHostEntry(myIP);
        List<string> compName = GetIPHost.HostName.ToString().Split('.').ToList();
        return compName.First();
    }