Httpurlconnection digest authentication

Question

We have an applet which runs after requesting a page from an http server. This applet then makes thousands of http requests (SOAP) to the same server. Our problem is that when we set the server to require digest authentication for the soap service, the httpurlconnection is sending the soap request, getting back an unauthorized, then sending the auth information with the next request. So every request is getting huge overhead, 2 round trips, when it should be 1. For the first request, java vm pops up its little window and asks for credentials, then for the rest of the requests it uses those same credentials, but does not automatically send them until the server requests them. How can I set it so that for each request, it automatically sends the credentials with the cnonce, instead of sending no credentials, getting an unauthorized reply, then sending again with the credentials? I tried System.setProperty("http.auth.digest.validateServer", "true");, but that did not change anything. All help is appreciated.

Answer 1

A brute-force way I have discovered is to clear out the entire AuthCacheValue map:
AuthCacheValue.setAuthCache(new AuthCacheImpl());
However, both AuthCacheValue and AuthCacheImpl are part of the sun.net.www.* classes, so this method would be very fragile and raises issues of incompatibility.