Is there a reason that always-auth is specified in the npm connect docs?

Hello,

In the https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/artifacts/npm/npmrc?view=azure-devops&tabs=windows%2Cclassic and the setup help for connecting to an Azure DevOps feed, it mentions that along with adding the registry reference in npmrc, it also mentions to set always-auth=true.

Is there a reason for this? I would have thought that all requests to the internal repository would need authenticating and authorizing.

I found an amazon web services page that stated this is needed for npm 6 or below, but couldn't find anything that repeated that claim on the Microsoft, nor NPM docs.

Would it be possible to provide the reasoning for including that property in your recommended .npmrc document?