Should my bitcoin core node be reachable before it has fully synchronized with the block chain?

Question

I just set up Umbrel on a Raspberry Pi 4 and my internet connection is fairly lacking so the blockchain synchronization is taking a long time (currently it is at 1.65%).

While that's going on, I'm trying to get my Wasabi Wallet hooked up to my node. In Wasabi I've gone to Tools -> Settings -> Alternative Block Source for Main and entered my Umbrel hostname + port as: umbrel.local:8333 (also tried the IP address I reserved for the device in my router settings). Unfortunately, it seems like Wasabi may not actually be connecting to my node.

How do I know? Well, I've ssh'ed into my Umbrel, then docker exec'ed into the bitcoind container running on there, and then ran the following:

bitcoin-cli getpeerinfo | grep 'inbound'

The output does not show any inbound peers:

/ $ bitcoin-cli getpeerinfo | grep 'inbound'
    "inbound": false,
    "inbound": false,
    "inbound": false,
    "inbound": false,
    "inbound": false,
    "inbound": false,
    "inbound": false,
    "inbound": false,
    "inbound": false,
    "inbound": false,
/ $

Also, I set up port forwarding on my router so the node should be accessible externally so I tried to confirm this by going to Bitnodes and using the "Check Node" utility -- it reports <IP> is unreachable

Is this normal? Will I just not see any inbound peers until I'm completely synced with the blockchain?

Answer 1

I did some digging and it seems that your node will only accept incoming connections once you're completely synced.

Reference: answer for post 'Checking if full node is running'