can't join to the invite

sometimes it will tell me i cant join after being invited, but then i get the person to send another invite and it will let me in, weird, but atleast i get in....... anyway, my brother recently got a ps3 and this game and we had 1 nights racing in a private session...all worked well, but ever since then we cannot invite each other, or join into a room where the other one is....really, really annoying, especially as he only lives about 300 meters down the road. the other day we tried everything to sort out his modem, belkin f5d8636 i think it is. after trying to get belkin tech to help us (with some success, it went into a public room! but then turned to rubbish again), we took the modem back and swapped it for a netgear dgn2000 (which is exactly what i done, swapped a belkin for a netgear). anyway it seemed to connect us fine, although we did only try it once so hopefully it continues to work. so maybe if you can try another modem and see if that helps?

so you only have a router? no modem?the ones i mentioned are modem/routers so do the job of both edit: and why the hell arnt the smiley faces working?

I have a Verizon wireless router and this game use to never let me accept invites. My NAT settings were strict.  I set up a strict IP address for my XBox and ever since then, I have had no problems connected to any games or accepting invites. Works everytime. =] My NAT settings are currently Moderate. I don't think I'll ever get it to Open. But it works great like this.