We are doing the analysis phase of a call centre system. To get round a potential tricky authentication problem, we might need to read the LAN ID of the agent and use that as their user id in the system.
Is it possible to read the LAN ID from ASP.NET, or even from Javascript?
I'm not sure what a LAN ID is exactly. I'll just assume you mean a MAC address?
If so, I don't believe it's possible to obtain that via ASP.NET without an ActiveX control or something being installed on the client side.
And of course, MAC addresses can be changed (new network card, etc.) and be spoofed, so that may or may not be potentially problematic in your situation.
You can get the caller's Lan IP form the Request.http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.httprequest.userhostaddress.aspx
If you switch on Integrated Windows authentication for the website (and switch off anonymous access) then the user will be authenticated by their domain account whenever they access the website. You can retrieve their username in code using
Page.User.Identity.Name
I have done this successfully in several intranet applications in the past.