How to get a user's client IP address in ASP.N

Question

We have Request.UserHostAddress to get the IP address in ASP.NET, but this is usually the user's ISP's IP address, not exactly the user's machine IP address who for example clicked a link. How can I get the real IP Address?

For example, in a Stack Overflow user profile it is: "Last account activity: 4 hours ago from 86.123.127.8", but my machine IP address is a bit different. How does Stack Overflow get this address?

In some web systems there is an IP address check for some purposes. For example, with a certain IP address, for every 24 hours can the user just have only 5 clicks on download links? This IP address should be unique, not for an ISP that has a huge range of clients or Internet users.

Did I understand well?

Answer 1

UPDATE: Thanks to Bruno Lopes. If several ip addresses could come then need to use this method:

    private string GetUserIP()
    {
        string ipList = Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"];

        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ipList))
        {
            return ipList.Split(',')[0];
        }

        return Request.ServerVariables["REMOTE_ADDR"];
    }

Answer 2

string IP = HttpContext.Current.Request.Params["HTTP_CLIENT_IP"] ?? HttpContext.Current.Request.UserHostAddress;

Answer 3

All of the responses so far take into account the non-standardized, but very common, X-Forwarded-For header. There is a standardized Forwarded header which is a little more difficult to parse out. Some examples are as follows:

Forwarded: for="_gazonk"
Forwarded: For="[2001:db8:cafe::17]:4711"
Forwarded: for=192.0.2.60;proto=http;by=203.0.113.43
Forwarded: for=192.0.2.43, for=198.51.100.17

I have written a class that takes both of these headers into account when determining a client's IP address.

using System;
using System.Web;

namespace Util
{
    public static class IP
    {
        public static string GetIPAddress()
        {
            return GetIPAddress(new HttpRequestWrapper(HttpContext.Current.Request));
        }

        internal static string GetIPAddress(HttpRequestBase request)
        {
            // handle standardized 'Forwarded' header
            string forwarded = request.Headers["Forwarded"];
            if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(forwarded))
            {
                foreach (string segment in forwarded.Split(',')[0].Split(';'))
                {
                    string[] pair = segment.Trim().Split('=');
                    if (pair.Length == 2 && pair[0].Equals("for", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
                    {
                        string ip = pair[1].Trim('"');

                        // IPv6 addresses are always enclosed in square brackets
                        int left = ip.IndexOf('['), right = ip.IndexOf(']');
                        if (left == 0 && right > 0)
                        {
                            return ip.Substring(1, right - 1);
                        }

                        // strip port of IPv4 addresses
                        int colon = ip.IndexOf(':');
                        if (colon != -1)
                        {
                            return ip.Substring(0, colon);
                        }

                        // this will return IPv4, "unknown", and obfuscated addresses
                        return ip;
                    }
                }
            }

            // handle non-standardized 'X-Forwarded-For' header
            string xForwardedFor = request.Headers["X-Forwarded-For"];
            if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(xForwardedFor))
            {
                return xForwardedFor.Split(',')[0];
            }

            return request.UserHostAddress;
        }
    }
}

Below are some unit tests that I used to validate my solution:

using System.Collections.Specialized;
using System.Web;
using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;

namespace UtilTests
{
    [TestClass]
    public class IPTests
    {
        [TestMethod]
        public void TestForwardedObfuscated()
        {
            var request = new HttpRequestMock("for=\"_gazonk\"");
            Assert.AreEqual("_gazonk", Util.IP.GetIPAddress(request));
        }

        [TestMethod]
        public void TestForwardedIPv6()
        {
            var request = new HttpRequestMock("For=\"[2001:db8:cafe::17]:4711\"");
            Assert.AreEqual("2001:db8:cafe::17", Util.IP.GetIPAddress(request));
        }

        [TestMethod]
        public void TestForwardedIPv4()
        {
            var request = new HttpRequestMock("for=192.0.2.60;proto=http;by=203.0.113.43");
            Assert.AreEqual("192.0.2.60", Util.IP.GetIPAddress(request));
        }

        [TestMethod]
        public void TestForwardedIPv4WithPort()
        {
            var request = new HttpRequestMock("for=192.0.2.60:443;proto=http;by=203.0.113.43");
            Assert.AreEqual("192.0.2.60", Util.IP.GetIPAddress(request));
        }

        [TestMethod]
        public void TestForwardedMultiple()
        {
            var request = new HttpRequestMock("for=192.0.2.43, for=198.51.100.17");
            Assert.AreEqual("192.0.2.43", Util.IP.GetIPAddress(request));
        }
    }

    public class HttpRequestMock : HttpRequestBase
    {
        private NameValueCollection headers = new NameValueCollection();

        public HttpRequestMock(string forwarded)
        {
            headers["Forwarded"] = forwarded;
        }

        public override NameValueCollection Headers
        {
            get { return this.headers; }
        }
    }
}

Answer 4

If you are using CloudFlare, you can try this Extension Method:

public static class IPhelper
{
    public static string GetIPAddress(this HttpRequest Request)
    {
        if (Request.Headers["CF-CONNECTING-IP"] != null) return Request.Headers["CF-CONNECTING-IP"].ToString();

        if (Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"] != null) return Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"].ToString();

        return Request.UserHostAddress;
    }
}

then

string IPAddress = Request.GetIPAddress();

Answer 5

Combining the answers from @Tony and @mangokun, I have created the following extension method:

public static class RequestExtensions
{
    public static string GetIPAddress(this HttpRequest Request)
    {
        if (Request.Headers["CF-CONNECTING-IP"] != null) return Request.Headers["CF-CONNECTING-IP"].ToString();

        if (Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"] != null)
        {
            string ipAddress = Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"];

            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ipAddress))
            {
                string[] addresses = ipAddress.Split(',');
                if (addresses.Length != 0)
                {
                    return addresses[0];
                }
            }
        }

        return Request.UserHostAddress;
    }
}

Answer 6

I think I should share my experience with you all. Well I see in some situations REMOTE_ADDR will NOT get you what you are looking for. For instance, if you have a Load Balancer behind the scene and if you are trying to get the Client's IP then you will be in trouble. I checked it with my IP masking software plus I also checked with my colleagues being in different continents. So here is my solution.

When I want to know the IP of a client, I try to pick every possible evidence so I could determine if they are unique:

Here I found another sever-var that could help you all if you want to get exact IP of the client side. so I am using : HTTP_X_CLUSTER_CLIENT_IP

HTTP_X_CLUSTER_CLIENT_IP always gets you the exact IP of the client. In any case if its not giving you the value, you should then look for HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR as it is the second best candidate to get you the client IP and then the REMOTE_ADDR var which may or may not return you the IP but to me having all these three is what I find the best thing to monitor them.

I hope this helps some guys.