"Communications link failure" while using MySQL in JBoss EAP

Issue

• Encountering CommunicationsException and EOFException while using a connection in JBoss EAP

Caused by: com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.CommunicationsException: Communications link failure

The last packet successfully received from the server was 367,534 milliseconds ago.  The last packet sent successfully to the server was 9 milliseconds ago.
        ...
        at com.mysql.jdbc.Util.handleNewInstance(Util.java:377)
        at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createCommunicationsException(SQLError.java:1036)
        at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.reuseAndReadPacket(MysqlIO.java:3427)
        at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.reuseAndReadPacket(MysqlIO.java:3327)
        at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.checkErrorPacket(MysqlIO.java:3814)
        at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sendCommand(MysqlIO.java:2435)
        at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sqlQueryDirect(MysqlIO.java:2582)
        at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.execSQL(ConnectionImpl.java:2530)
        at com.mysql.jdbc.PreparedStatement.executeInternal(PreparedStatement.java:1907)
        at com.mysql.jdbc.PreparedStatement.executeQuery(PreparedStatement.java:2030)
        ...
Caused by: java.io.EOFException: Can not read response from server. Expected to read 4 bytes, read 0 bytes before connection was unexpectedly lost.
        at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.readFully(MysqlIO.java:2914)
        at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.reuseAndReadPacket(MysqlIO.java:3337)
        ...