Question

Is there a way in .net 2.0 to discover the network alias for the machine that my code is running on? Specifically, if my workgroup sees my machine as //jekkedev01, how do I retrieve that name programmatically?

Answer 1

Since you can have multiple network interfaces, each of which can have multiple IPs, and any single IP can have multiple names that can resolve to it, there may be more than one.

If you want to know all the names by which your DNS server knows your machine, you can loop through them all like this:

public ArrayList GetAllDnsNames() {   ArrayList names = new ArrayList();   IPHostEntry host;   //check each Network Interface   foreach (NetworkInterface nic in NetworkInterface.GetAllNetworkInterfaces()) {     //check each IP address claimed by this Network Interface     foreach (UnicastIPAddressInformation i in nic.GetIPProperties().UnicastAddresses) {       //get the DNS host entry for this IP address       host = System.Net.Dns.GetHostEntry(i.Address.ToString());       if (!names.Contains(host.HostName)) {         names.Add(host.HostName);       }       //check each alias, adding each to the list       foreach (string s in host.Aliases) {         if (!names.Contains(s)) {           names.Add(s);         }       }     }   }   //add 'simple' host name - above loop returns fully qualified domain names (FQDNs)   //but this method returns just the machine name without domain information   names.Add(System.Net.Dns.GetHostName());    return names; }