I'm able to use BlobMessage to transfer large files, but run into a problem if the 'out of band' mechanism requires authentication.

For example, when I send a BlobMessage with url = "http://fileserver:8080/bigFile.dat" I can read the input stream at the consumer end just fine. When the http server is set up to require authentication I get an exception because the DefaultBlobDownloadStrategy.getInputStream() isn't authenticated and sees a 401 error.

There's no way to specify the credentials in the BlobMessage, and while URLs of the form http://username:password@fileserver:8080/bigFile.dat work in (some) browsers, they don't work in a BlobMessage.

Is use of authentication on out of band mechanisms (http and ftp) unsupported? I considered writing my own AuthenticatingBlobDownloadStrategy but it's unclear how to replace the default one.

Any clues?

Thanks,

-Adrian