wsdl2perl.pl is what I used to generate the classes. I think the code you quoted is to read a WSDL file that is protected. Anyway, it would still have the same problem, since the code I quoted in the OP does pretty much the same thing ... providing a method to get called when challenged for authentication details (since LWP is used under the covers anyway). If LWP doesn't get a 401 HTTP response code, it won't send the authentication details