Hi Jeff, nice to see you back. You did it right: you posted the error message. This is a fundamental condition to understand what is happening by your side!
If NS8 is configured with the default VPN endpoint, NS7 is trying to send UDP packets to the NS8 FQDN, port 55820. If the NS8 FQDN is not correctly resolved from NS7, an HTTP connection through the VPN times out. Run this command to verify how NS8 FQDN is resolved in NS7:
getent hosts <NS8 FQDN HERE>