Get client IP address in a WCF Service hosted using HTTPS 443 bindings

Question

5.00/5 (1 vote)

See more:

Hi all,
I want to get the client IP address in a WCF Service hosted using HTTPS 443 bindings. I am getting the Host IP address by below code.

C#

private string GetIP()
{
   OperationContext context = OperationContext.Current;
   MessageProperties prop = context.IncomingMessageProperties;
   RemoteEndpointMessageProperty endpoint =
      prop[RemoteEndpointMessageProperty.Name] as RemoteEndpointMessageProperty;
   string ip = endpoint.Address;

   return ip ;

}

My host server is under the firewall access does it create any problem for the WCF Service to read the correct client IP address.

Please help if you have any suggestions on this.

Thanks in advance.

Regards.

Reishabh

Posted 15-Jun-12 1:12am

Reishabh_Saxena

Updated 15-Jun-12 2:03am

Tim Corey

v2

Add a Solution

2 solutions

Solution 2

One thing to note if you're using async/await -- you need to store OperationContext.Current into a local variable at the beginning of your service method, and pass it along, since it will be null after the first await in your async method.

Posted 14-Aug-15 22:14pm

mod8722

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Stephen Hewison · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-15T06:12:00

There doesn't appear to be a reliable way to get the client IP for a WCF call using .Net 3. In .Net 3.5 you can and it's done exactly how you've described in your question.

If your client IP is on the same network you should be able to get the IP. But if it's not it's important to remember how internet routing and network address tables (NAT) work.

If your clients are not connected directly to the internet and is accessing it via a router, it's possible that many of your clients could be sharing the same IP address as the only visible IP address will be the public IP assigned to the network by their internet service provider (This is often called a none NAT address or real address).

In larger corporate networks this can be further obfuscated as they could have multiple levels of NATs between you and your client.

If that wasn't enough, if your client is behind a load balanced proxy, you could find that the same client doesn't always come from the same ip address. An IPv4 address is split into four bytes. 192.168.0.1. 192 is the class A, 168 is the class B, 0 is the class C and the 1 is the class D part. You may find your client's subsequent requests are coming from multiple class D addresses. This is also an issue you come across when configuring load balanced web servers which require server affinity for state management. If you don't configure the affinity to class C addresses (So all matching class C address go to the same server) then you'll soon run into state management issue with corporate users.