The new Maven repository is currently experiencing some performance issues.  Downloading dependencies from the repository can take a long time or time out altogether.  This appears to be due to a large amount of memory being used by Nexus (~700mb physical and ~1200mb virtual memory).  As a temporary fix, we have restarted the Nexus instance and the performance is back to normal.  Please be patient as we try to find a more permanent solution.

A new wiki page has been created to track the plans for finding a longer term solution to improve repository performance.

http://community.jboss.org/wiki/MavenRepositoryPerformance