Another freeze topic

[Vincenzo_NL]

So I came home from a vacation yesterday, to see GTA IV on my doormat. I was excited like a little kid, so I put the holy grail in and install the game to my ps3's hdd. I get ever more excited once the screen depicts the words 'Starting a new game'. This excitement is soon toned down though, when she starting of a new game seems to literally take hours. So I go online and google what the problem may be. Great, at least more people are having thesame problem. I then telephone a friend of mine, who - to my surprise - doesn't have the problem at all, and has no problem whatsoever going online! This is where my question comes into play. How come so many of us are having major issues (and by major issues I mean NOT being able to connect to the server AT all), and some of us aren't. Is it a serverside problem that rockstar/sony has to fix, which somehow makes it possible for SOME players to play (online) and some not? Or is it a problem with particular ps3 models? If not, could it have something to do with my (or our, rather) internet connection?

 

I'd love to get some opinions from people who actually know anything about this stuff, considering I'm a complete technical dweeb. My apologies if there's a dozen topics on this particular subject, although I doubt it since I searched. My question, which hasn't really been answered anywhere (I think anyway), is more why some people CAN play, and some can not.