A friend and I and my 2 sons are trying to play. Me and my 2 sons are in same house. Friend across town. No matter who did the invite it didn't work. So my friend unplugged his router and plugged directly into his modem. I could see his name this time but unable to connect because it said i was to high of a Level even though when he setup the room its set to My Rank and Higher!
So i made a new character and I could connect.
Then he forwarded the ports 27015-27016, 8766 in his router and reconnected it and i could again connect to him with no problems.

So i forwarded the ports on my router also and he could connect to me but I am having a prob with having multiple computers in the same house connecting to coop though . My 2 sons can not connect to me if i make the game. They can see the game put in the password but it times out. Any ideas? have 3 legal copies, Mine and my 2 boys. We want to play together but cant unless my friend is on and makes the game. Also want to have it Internet co op so i can invite other friends at same time. I have searched all over the net/Google and there isn't much info on the coop thing. Any help is much appreciated.

My system..
Intel i7 QuadCore
ATI Radeon 5870 (11.3 drivers, works perfect)
Win 7 64bit
12GB DDR3 Memory
BIGFOOT Killer 2100 NIC
Router: D-Link DIR-655 revB.

I have the same issue as well. It's not picking up any LAN games either. Also, the port forwarding only works for one computer on the LAN, the others are hooped from creating/joining games.

Well i have forwarded the ports for my computer only seeing I am making the game. Should i port forward for my kids computers too? i don't see that fixing the issue. Again they can see my game, and enter password but then times out after they try to connect. (actually i did port forward one of the kids computers to try it, and it didn't work, same thing times out)
Like stated my friend and i tested this in different parts of town, when he didn't forward or plug into his modem directly I couldn't even see the game or put in password. once we port forwarded we can see the game (has Steam user ID, as game name) then click on it enter password then [censored] + tab out of steams chat overlay then join game in brink works fine.
That also brings up a question, why is it when you do a friend invite you have to use the chat overlay [censored]+tab, hit join there then enter a password, then u have to [censored]+tab out of chat overlay back into game then join from within game? Seems like extra steps that are not necessary???

You can only open ports for a single computer on a network, you could setup DMZ for the sever and just disable DMZ after that, that should work, hopefully.. lmao

Sending invites through the Overlay is the only way to get a friend to connect to you without using a browser. Just how it works for Steam, if you gave him your IP, he could also directly connect, but it's just easier to Invite.

Edit: I should have added, also if you were to port open, what I think is happening within your house hold, the bits is being send to your router, then when it calls the ports it just sends it right back to you hence why your sons are being timed one. What is happening is your sons' pcs are sending your computer (svr) the signal to join, when your computer replies it sends the signal to the router but when it called the router for the ports it ends up in a loop going back to your pc and timing out your sons' pcs

Thanks Sinn. Makes sense. will have to mess with it later tonight i guess