SWARM doesn't want to work but seems setup correctly

Hello, I’ve been searching on and off for most of the day, reading many things and trying a few of them without success.

I’ve followed the basic docker install, swarm manager and workers.

example
sudo docker swarm init --listen-addr 192.168.0.218:2377 --advertise-addr 192.168.0.218

sudo docker swarm join --token SWMTKN-1-1l0280etdtdtqn8qc6pi5lm1cmcs2vk8mz92n6hqdde91kj88u-1h0278cywn9pthi5yafphow5l 192.168.0.218:2377

The resulting “join” messages seem just fine, swarm is now active.

I am attempting to manage this via Portainer and it seems to work well.
I can pull down and deploy images across all the worker nodes, no problem.

I can connect directly to each one and test the app via port 8888, all results all correct.

The problem stems from hitting the manager node. It will serve up the Web API but it will not load balance the process. I get only responses from the manager node and no others.

I’ve scaled down the cluster, works great, there is a scenario where the manager loses the container image due to the scale down which is fine and there are 2 or more instances of that service across other nodes. I can connect to them directly via ip addresses but not via the Manager node.

The image of Ubuntu is on Rock64 and Pine64 SBCs, therefore there is no firewall present on these minimal images.

Not sure where to go now so I am here.

Client:
Version: 18.09.1
API version: 1.39
Go version: go1.10.6
Git commit: 4c52b90
Built: Wed Jan 9 19:42:36 2019
OS/Arch: linux/arm64
Experimental: false

Server: Docker Engine - Community
Engine:
Version: 18.09.1
API version: 1.39 (minimum version 1.12)
Go version: go1.10.6
Git commit: 4c52b90
Built: Wed Jan 9 19:03:16 2019
OS/Arch: linux/arm64
Experimental: false

Doesn’t anyone have any suggestions on what to check next, please?

thank you

I don’t see 4789, is that normal?