diff --git a/src/processing/flink_jobs/Dockerfile b/src/processing/flink_jobs/Dockerfile
index 6a4f249..56334c4 100644
--- a/src/processing/flink_jobs/Dockerfile
+++ b/src/processing/flink_jobs/Dockerfile
@@ -13,12 +13,18 @@ ARG PYFLINK_KAFKA_JAR_VERSION=5.0.0-2.2
 # away from the Flink binary distribution version above.
 COPY processing/flink_jobs/requirements.txt /tmp/flink-requirements.txt
 
+# archive.apache.org throttles aggressively and a wedged connection produces
+# zero curl output — CI builds hung here for 10-30 min (flink-smoke #213/#218/
+# #219/#220 lanes). The speed guard aborts any transfer crawling below 64 KB/s
+# for 60 s and retries, so a throttled mirror fails fast instead of hanging.
+ARG CURL_GUARDS="--connect-timeout 30 --speed-limit 65536 --speed-time 60 --retry 5 --retry-all-errors"
+
 RUN apt-get update \
     && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends bash ca-certificates curl openjdk-17-jre-headless \
-    && curl -fsSL "https://archive.apache.org/dist/flink/flink-${FLINK_VERSION}/flink-${FLINK_VERSION}-bin-scala_${SCALA_VERSION}.tgz" -o /tmp/flink.tgz \
+    && curl -fsSL $CURL_GUARDS "https://archive.apache.org/dist/flink/flink-${FLINK_VERSION}/flink-${FLINK_VERSION}-bin-scala_${SCALA_VERSION}.tgz" -o /tmp/flink.tgz \
     && tar -xzf /tmp/flink.tgz -C /opt \
     && ln -s "/opt/flink-${FLINK_VERSION}" /opt/flink \
-    && curl -fsSL "https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/org/apache/flink/flink-sql-connector-kafka/${PYFLINK_KAFKA_JAR_VERSION}/flink-sql-connector-kafka-${PYFLINK_KAFKA_JAR_VERSION}.jar" -o "/opt/flink/lib/flink-sql-connector-kafka-${PYFLINK_KAFKA_JAR_VERSION}.jar" \
+    && curl -fsSL $CURL_GUARDS "https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/org/apache/flink/flink-sql-connector-kafka/${PYFLINK_KAFKA_JAR_VERSION}/flink-sql-connector-kafka-${PYFLINK_KAFKA_JAR_VERSION}.jar" -o "/opt/flink/lib/flink-sql-connector-kafka-${PYFLINK_KAFKA_JAR_VERSION}.jar" \
     && mkdir -p /opt/flink/plugins/s3-fs-hadoop \
     && ln -s "/opt/flink/opt/flink-s3-fs-hadoop-${FLINK_VERSION}.jar" "/opt/flink/plugins/s3-fs-hadoop/flink-s3-fs-hadoop-${FLINK_VERSION}.jar" \
     && test -e "/opt/flink/plugins/s3-fs-hadoop/flink-s3-fs-hadoop-${FLINK_VERSION}.jar" \