Yeah, it might not be.
But, in reality it can deny access, due to the waiting time that the proxy has. Or it could be the proxy itself that shuts down after some time without receiving a response.
The point will be that this can happen if there are a lot of people accessing the information at the same time.
But, as I said, this is my perspective based on the analysis I can do when opening the topic in question. I could be totally wrong.
The difference is that FeeBuddy is a static image. These are dynamic images, they change each time you refresh the page.
Your example will always load, because (with my post) there are only 2 identical requests for each image, for a user.
Imagine multiplying that by 50 images, for 10 users at the same time. At the same time the proxy is asking the server for 500 different images, and the server has to generate all of them. This may take longer to do and the connection may drop.
Now, there may have been some configuration change that caused this, on the server side or on the proxy side. I can't say that anymore.
Heads up, this is just my guess.
EDIT:
I did some more tests on the topic (several refreshes) and there comes a point where it stops showing all the images, which really indicates some blockage to the image proxy.
In addition to the exception to the forum, you have to specifically give it to the proxy.
I suggest adding the ASN of the forum server to the list of provisions/executions.