ok, for the record I'm back on this... ☹️ I disconnected all the clients from the first node, completely removed them from the network, and rejoined them using a token. One of the clients can ping the first node but not the other client. The other client can not ping any node.
The third client is actually remotely hosted at another site and I can't affect it directly, so I can't test it.
Either way the idea of disconnecting them from the network and rejoining them did not solve the problem