Kafka startup fails with zookeeper timeout (remote server), yet the machine can connect to zookeeper directly

Well - changing the timeout helped. now i need to chase the network delays down

cat config/server.properties

# coding: UTF-8 
# This file created by Chef from template. Do not hand edit this file

log.dirs=/var/kafka
port=9092
num.partitions=4
default.replication.factor=3
log.flush.interval.messages=1
log.retention.minutes=43200
log.retention.check.interval.ms=3600000
num.replica.fetchers=4
replica.fetch.wait.max.ms=5000
replica.lag.max.messages=10000
auto.leader.rebalance.enable=true
num.network.threads=8
advertised.host.name=10.7.20.71
zookeeper.connection.timeout.ms=16000
broker.id=1
zookeeper.connect=10.7.20.100:2181,10.7.20.101:2181,10.7.20.102:2181