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ASP.NET Authentication Methods

ASP.NET provides its own authentication mechanism that comes into play after a request clears IIS (see Figure 6.1). ASP.NET authentication lets you add more flexibility and protection to your security implementation through four authentication and authorization options:

• Windows authentication

• Passport authentication

• Forms authentication

• No authentication (also called default or IIS authentication)

As with many other parameters in ASP.NET, you configure the authentication method by editing the Web.config application configuration file that resides in the application root folder. The code excerpt from this file included in Figure 6.6 displays the selected authentication options.

Figure 6.6. Choosing ASP.NET Authentication ...