I believe this to be odd because that URL is not found in Chromium or Brave’s source code. As such, these calls likely derive from something other than the browser’s internal code (e.g. a loaded page, extension).
In this case, the URL you provided (i.e. li-in-f113.1e100.net) has been reversed-mapped to google-analytics.com, based on some cursory searching. Brave blocks calls to google-analytics.com by default; if you’re seeing those, you must have lowered your shields, or something else is not working as intended within Brave.
We don’t presently offer a portable version of Brave. Did you download this build from portapps.io? Note that that build does some work to achieve a portable status; it disables encryption on Windows, and the generation of a machine id. I don’t see any tests associated with these commits, so it’s entirely possible that while these changes enable portability, they may break some of Brave’s third-party blocking logic.
Two final things to note: version 1.17.75 was released more than a month ago, on 03 December, 2020. Anytime you’re on an older build, there’s an increased chance that some things will not work as intended. In this case, you’re not terribly behind, so it is less likely that this would be the cause.
The last thing I would like to suggest is reviewing your need for The Great Suspender. That extension was recently the cause of much concern among users, after it moved to a new maintainer. Users report that after the extension was sold, remote code execution was added, which was responsible for fraudulent activities, and tracking.
Based on what we’ve covered here; I don’t believe this call originates from Brave’s code, or Chromium’s. Again, it’s not found in the source for either (see first paragraph) for links.
Because you are using an unsupported build, with little-to-no complimentary tests, there is a good chance something could be broken. You also happen to be using an extension which was recently found to have exchanged hands, engaged in remote-code execution, and tracking. I suspect the answer is within this last set of details.