Staying logged in across page requests

I am working on using XIFF as in in page chat client for my users. I would like to keep them logged in between page requests is this possible? My current solution is I am using HybridAuthProvider and the Primary authentication is done using the session_id that is set for their session (in my app), and the secondary authentication is the standard authentication. I was just curious if there was an easier way to keep the XIFF client authenticated.