Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations

Whenever I attempt to play online through the GSA button in multiplayer, I get a message saying: "Error GameSpy Server is unreachable (check your internet connection)".  Matt Pulaskee and I talk all the time, and we talked about the issue.  He recommended that I post this in the FO forums.  Also, he asked about what internet connection I have.  I told him 56k, and he recommended that I get a cable or DSL connection.  I'd like to have some further advice on the matter of whether or not DSL/cable would be appropriate or that maybe I could possibly instead get a faster modem.