Baffled by how online private lounges/rooms in open lobby work..need clarification.

Ok, on Sunday night I set up my lounge in community, invite some people (5/6) , people join.... race for an hour or 2.... no problem.

Then Monday night set up my lounge. People find it difficult to join because of 'internet compatibility' but in the end most do. At one point I decided to leave my lounge to set up another...however it seems that your lounge space is kind of 'fixed'. I then had trouble getting back into my own lounge. Others were still there because I had already set it up intially and me leaving didn't seem to be an issue.

Ok, I get back into my lounge at last. 8 racers. Start the race...I can only see 3 other racers, so we start again. Most others could see all 7. Then it gets wierd, I start the race and get kicked immediatley, get back into the lounge, the race has started so I leave it but keep getting kicked each time I try to chat/watch the race. At one point I switched my PS3 on/off to try to get a better connection...whoops..I thought...there is a race in my lounge...but when I get back to my lounge the race has continued with no problems even though I had switched off my PS3 for a few seconds?????

Eventually I get back in and the race has finished. Most others have had no problems. Some couldn't get back into the room at all. We then race some more amd I have no issues at all for the next hour.

Questions?

What is causing these problems? Does my internet connection affect anything here apart from enabling me to connect to my lounge? How does hosting a race in your own lounge compare to hosting a race in the open lobby?

Please help so hopefully a better understanding leads to a better online experience...

I read a thread about the servers but ill be darned if i can find the thread again lol it had to do with the server speeds and the latency of the fast connections vs the slowest...ill try to search for it but ive had a few...but ill try to get the link to you...im not sure if it was in the FAQ or the normal lounge

when you were only racing 3 ppl I had the full list of 8 in the lounge racing

The thing that really confused me was that I can switch off and go to bed whilst others race around in my lounge??? Kind of like going to bed at night and getting up in the morning to find people still sitting around drinking from the night before...

Possible conclusion from this is as long as I set up the lounge and players join while I am still there, then the lounge remains valid until all others have left because you can't just enter peoples lounges without them setting them up.

The missing people thing seems to be happening alot more since the recent update in the past week?

We had it at my last event also, to fix the guy who was not seeing everyone had to rejoin.

The private lounge issue is strange, you create it and expect it to be yours and stay on your connection. But once you leave, ownership seems to transfer to someone else and the race is now hosted on their connection...for better or worse you have no choice in the matter until EVERYONE leaves.

I wish we could password protect "public" lobbies.

Do you find that there are less issues regarding connection and invisible drivers in the open lobby compared to the private lounge ?