Active directory

Is there any advanatge or disadvantage of using active directory
authentication for external website with approx 45,000 users?

Thanks

Well, you need some authentication store presumably.

AD provides a central store that can be used by multiple servers. It also
provides robust logging, password complexity, account lockout etc policies,
as well as client certificate storage etc.

On the other hand, AD requires a domain, and creating users in AD gives
them, some, privileges throughout the entire domain (i.e. above and beyond
your web application). additionally, to authenticate using AD requires CALs
(either on a per server or per user or per device basis).

So you need to think about what you're trying to do. If it's just
authenticate external users, then you might be better off with Forms
Authentication and a custom membership store in a database.

Cheers
Ken


"Andy" <Andy@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:824DCFCF-C187-40DD-8FAC-031A3EC50573@microsoft.com...
> Is there any advanatge or disadvantage of using active directory
> authentication for external website with approx 45,000 users?
>
> Thanks