Every time the test feature of the connector is used, a 'ghost copy' is created. This must be compiled from scratch. Some connector (types) have a large list of external jar files that must be linked when the new compile is done. 
All jars are supposed to be linked locally and they are. But if there is a jar that is not found locally, even if it is not really required, it will try to reach out to the maven repository on the internet. If this is reachable it succeeds, but if not it tries for 5 minutes and then moves on. If there are multiple jars it waits 5 minutes every jar. Again it still works after that but the timeouts cause a delay in the compile.

Ensured connectivity between ACM and endpoint using the following commands:
ping <ip-address>
telnet <ip-address>
The connector's timeout is not a network timeout, but an AFX timeout. This will be evident in the above commands' outputs showing no issue.
Collect a tcpdump but the file will be completely empty, this is due to the connector sending no packets on the network as it is still deploying.

The first step is finishing in seconds (it builds the java project in a jar (zip) file), as evident in the esb.AFX-MAIN.log: 

[INFO] --- maven-surefire-plugin:2.19.1:test (default-test) @ AFX-CONN-NHUDB_2 ---
[INFO]
[INFO] --- mule-maven-plugin:3.3.5:package (default-package) @ AFX-CONN-NHUDB_2 ---
[INFO] Building zip: /home/oracle/AFX/esb/appStaging/AFX-CONN-NHUDB_2/target/AFX-CONN-NHUDB_2-1.0.0-mule-application.jar
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 4.573 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2024-03-26T11:11:20-05:00
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

 The build (does the actual project deployment, like a deployment / linking step) is taking a very long time as per the esb.AFX-MAIN.log (almost 9 minutes):
 

[INFO] Parameter: groupId, Value: com.aveksa
[INFO] Parameter: artifactId, Value: AFX-CONN-NHUDB_2
[WARNING] The directory /home/oracle/AFX/esb/appStaging/AFX-CONN-NHUDB_2 already exists.
[INFO] Project created from Archetype in dir: /home/oracle/AFX/esb/appStaging/AFX-CONN-NHUDB_2
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 08:45 min
[INFO] Finished at: 2024-03-26T11:09:06-05:00
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The below portion of the logs show it saying it cannot (and will not) link this jar and that is shown in the esb.AFX-MAIN.log:

INFO  2024-03-26 11:39:01,781 [[MuleRuntime].uber.18: [10-AFX-MAIN].PRIMARY_REQUEST.BLOCKING @29884a01] [processor: PRIMARY_REQUEST/processors/5/route/2/processors/4; event: 1abcd390-eb8e-11ee-bb24-0050569469cb] MavenHelper: 
Failed to load native library:jansi-2.4.0-da8075e2c0ff9d3e-libjansi.so. The native library file at /tmp/jansi-2.4.0-da8075e2c0ff9d3e-libjansi.so is not executable, make sure that the directory is mounted on a partition without the noexec flag, or set the jansi.tmpdir system property to point to a proper location.  osinfo: Linux/x86_64
java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /tmp/jansi-2.4.0-da8075e2c0ff9d3e-libjansi.so: /tmp/jansi-2.4.0-da8075e2c0ff9d3e-libjansi.so: failed to map segment from shared object