Bitcoin Core freezing and RPC not responding

So, I'm running version 0.21.1 in Docker on AWS, and this setup's been solid for 11 months, no problems at all. But today, things went south. After restarting the node, I can't get it back to working order. Here's what's happening: - It starts up fine, no errors. - It begins syncing blocks. - At some point, the syncing halts, looks like some network issues kick in. - The RPC then just stops responding. I turned on net logging and there’s activity, but I'm seeing some concerning messages: Dec 18, 2023 @ 22:25:05.682 2023-12-18T21:25:05Z trying connection 151.25.251.232:8333 lastseen=273.8hrs Dec 18, 2023 @ 22:25:05.180 2023-12-18T21:25:05Z connection to 69.124.212.197:8333 timeout Dec 18, 2023 @ 22:25:00.178 2023-12-18T21:25:00Z trying connection 69.124.212.197:8333 lastseen=645.8hrs Dec 18, 2023 @ 22:24:59.739 2023-12-18T21:24:59Z Cleared nodestate for peer=20 Dec 18, 2023 @ 22:24:59.726 2023-12-18T21:24:59Z socket closed for peer=20 Dec 18, 2023 @ 22:24:59.726 2023-12-18T21:24:59Z disconnecting peer=20 Dec 18, 2023 @ 22:24:59.678 2023-12-18T21:24:59Z send version message: version 70016, blocks=821828, us=[::]:0, peer=20 Dec 18, 2023 @ 22:24:59.678 2023-12-18T21:24:59Z sending version (102 bytes) peer=20 Dec 18, 2023 @ 22:24:53.454 2023-12-18T21:24:53Z Added connection peer=20 Dec 18, 2023 @ 22:24:53.357 2023-12-18T21:24:53Z trying connection 185.135.81.50:8333 lastseen=12.9hrs Dec 18, 2023 @ 22:24:52.856 2023-12-18T21:24:52Z connection to 46.114.228.163:8333 timeout Dec 18, 2023 @ 22:24:47.853 2023-12-18T21:24:47Z trying connection 46.114.228.163:8333 lastseen=99.8hrs Dec 18, 2023 @ 22

Can you verify that your node can receive incoming traffic on port 8333, and not just outgoing? I don't know if your node has a firewall from Docker or AWS, but you might want to check that out to make sure that's not the cause of your problem. Is there any abnormal network usage on your node too?

As @NotATether already mentioned: Ensure that the necessary port (like 8333 in your case) is open and properly forwarded if behind a NAT. The logs indicate multiple timeouts and connection refusals. This could be due to issues with the peers your node is trying to connect to. You can manually add some stable peers that you are familiar with to see if the node can maintain a stable connection with them. Your ndode might got a temporarily ban due to many connection attempts in that short period. Just have a look at the logs of the node to ensure that it hasnt been banned by other peers.