>Al,
>
>Thank you, but it does not mention IP address in Connection String, it mentions VPNs. MS SQL documentation is promoting encrypted IP address in connection string with secure Windows Authentication... It's probably just as insecure as any other type of data connection.
>
>Anyone doing this (IP address) in a connection string in c# .NET?

IIRC, that thread was started because someone wanted to connect to a SQL Server through the public Internet, but they were not able to use a VPN, so they were looking for another solution. It was news to me that the SQL Server ODBC driver supports encryption, but that makes it possible to connect without a VPN, SSL or any other transport-level encryption.

As for using an IP address in a connection string, I haven't actually done this but my guess is that anyplace you would use a machine name, you could simply substitute the IP address instead. When you use a regular machine name, your client computer is just going out to DNS or WINS and getting back the IP address, anyways:

If:
- the target SQL Server instance name is MSSQL$CFI
- the machine that instance runs on is SERVER_CFI
- SERVER_CFI's IP address is 192.168.123.231

then you should be able to connect to either:
\\SERVER_CFI\MSSQL$CFI

or

\\192.168.123.231\MSSQL$CFI