public final class AssociationRetry {
    public Result execute(ClientFactory factory, int maxAttempts) throws Exception {
        Exception last = null;
        for (int attempt = 1; attempt <= maxAttempts; attempt++) {
            try (DlmsClient client = factory.open()) {
                client.associate();
                return client.read("0.0.40.0.0.255", 2);
            } catch (TemporaryTransportException ex) {
                last = ex;
            }
        }
        throw last;
    }
}

Synthetic stack excerpt:

com.example.dlms.TemporaryTransportException: UA not received before 3000 ms
    at com.example.dlms.HdlcLink.awaitUa(HdlcLink.java:184)
    at com.example.dlms.DlmsClient.associate(DlmsClient.java:91)
    at com.example.dlms.AssociationRetry.execute(AssociationRetry.java:7)
Caused by: java.net.SocketTimeoutException: synthetic timeout