figuring out why asp.net authentication ticket is expiring

Question

I need help figuring out why my authentication ticket is expiring after about an hour on my hosted website. But if I run the site locally the authentication ticket stays ali

Answer 1

Have you asked your hosting provider if the machine.config has this set to a diferent value? Settings on machine.config will override the web.config.

Answer 2

I added a machinekey entry in system.net. Something like this:

    <machineKey validationKey="aaa"
    decryptionKey="bbb" validation="SHA1" />

and now it keeps the user logged in. However, now it seems like I am having performance issues. The page used to take roughly 500ms to load now takes about double that time.

Answer 3

I would try several things in troubleshooting this:

• IIS version & settings between your localhost & hosting. Most likely there are some differences in application pool setting
• In IIS 7, there is a special setting for this: read here