PS3 connection probelm

[DealsR4theDevil]

My friend's PS3 does not want to connect to the internet properly. I was wondering if anyone on here has experienced this problem. He has tried wifi and direct connect through an ethernet port. The problem is as follows:

i try to sign up for the playstation network
says no connection, check your settings
most of the time it says connection timed out
the few times that it worked, it told me to download updates
when i went to updates, it timed out again

Any ideas/suggestions?