Abstract: A method and system for improving stock exchange equity trade order acknowledgment times including a network appliance (“trade accelerator”) in the sub-network of the trading platforms, having a specialized network flow processor with associated micro-code and a host processor running specialized software. Specialized network appliance software sensitive to trading protocols for communicating between trading platforms and exchange servers detects latency variations in trade order acknowledgments at the exchange and recommends to subscribing trading platforms a least latency trade order path.