ASP.NET MVC and mixed mode authentication

Question

Hi All

I have a scenario whereby I require users to be able to authenticate against an ASP.NET MVC web application using either Windows authentication or Forms authentication. If the user is on the internal network they will use Windows authentication and if they are connecting externally they will use Forms authentication. I’ve seen quite a few people asking the question how do I configure an ASP.NET MVC web application for this, but I haven’t found a complete explanation.

Please can someone provide a detailed explanation, with code examples, on how this would be done?

Thanks.

Alan T

Answer 1

This is called mixed authentication mode. Basically you cannot achieve this within a single application because in IIS once you set up Windows authentication for a virtual directory it will no longer accept users from different domains. So basically you need to have two applications, the first with Windows Authentication and the second (the main application) using Forms authentication. The first application will consist of a single address which will simply redirect to the main application by issuing an authentication ticket for the domain user.