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

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();
}

Answer 2

code in VB :

Dim myIP As IPAddress = IPAddress.Parse(Request.UserHostName)
    Dim GetIPHost As IPHostEntry = Dns.GetHostEntry(myIP)
    Dim compName As List(Of String) = GetIPHost.HostName.ToString.Split("").ToList

    return(compName.First)

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

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 5

Try this:

string name = Request.UserHostName;