Exactly!

here is the example Defining a JDBC Connection URL

   jdbc:IRIS://<host>:<port>/<namespace>

where the parameters are defined as follows:

  • host — IP address or Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). For example, both 127.0.0.1 and localhost indicate the local machine.
  • port — TCP port number on which the InterSystems IRIS SuperServer is listening. The default is 51773 (or the first available number higher than that if more than one instance of InterSystems IRIS is installed — see DefaultPort in the Configuration Parameter File Reference).
  • namespace — InterSystems IRIS namespace to be accessed.

AHH! that sounds quite different.

First is your super server port really 53773 ?
Default is 51773.  While 53773 might be a gateway port for reverse connection. 
you can check in SMP  System > Configuration > Memory and Startup  

Otherwise 
I suspect telnet as a protocol might be blocked by some firewall by principle.
from a terminal prompt in IRIS  you might try this:

USER>set tcp="|TCP|7000"
USER>open tcp:(:7000) use tcp read req#15

So you create a TCP listener on port 7000 hanging around
Then try to connect from an external server by telnet to port 7000 on your server 
As soon as you send 15 or more characters the READ will complete and you see the content in variable req  

As you describe I assume this will fail. Indicating that some firewalls or similar blocks access.
Most likely the port is blocked.

In addition netstat -a from system prompt

or user>$netstat -a  from IRIS terminal  shows ALL listeners on your system

It's not clear to me what you try:

"..so customers can connect to IRIS remotely using JDBC and not ODBC...."

So they need the related Java-Libraries to connect.   see Establishing JDBC Connections

While the setting in your jpg. relate to the SQL-JDBC Gateway that allows access to other DBs over JDBC.
You have also a JAVA gateway to run java out of IRIS See Using the Java Gateway.

That's a general problem of a web interface like this.
You start a query but it isn't finished before your fall into a browser timeout.

An easy workaround:

Start a terminal session (terminals don't know about timeout)
and from prompt run SQl.Shell

or for a multi-line statement just start with an empty line and run with GO

It will wait forever until completed

As these buffers are a (hopefully large) pool that belongs to your whole installation.
They are only cleared if you restart Caché.
But you should probably take a look at your "disk drives" (whatever type they are).
Their performance might be worth to check
[in quotes as they might be virtual in some way]  

In addition, a  performance check with WRC might make sense.
They are top experts to the subject.

If you have a large buffer pool you might run a $QUERY() loop across the whole global
in the morning and hope it stays there long enough. Some installations practice it that way.