The "speed bump" here being that NYSE's ancient creaky FIX gateway is slower than the NYSE ARCA gateway that they tell everyone to use instead. Quelle surprise! 80s text network protocol slower than 90s binary protocol: film at 11.
This is almost right. NYSE and Arca are two separate exchanges (both owned by NYSE). Both exchanges offer FIX and binary gateway protocols. Annoyingly, the Arca binary protocol and the NYSE binary protocol are not the same protocol. NYSE does not suggest using the Arca gateway to access NYSE. They suggest you use a NYSE binary gateway to access NYSE.
Dammit. I even looked this up before I wrote the comment, and got the opposite impression. (I'm a little familiar with the Arca protocol for other reasons).
Pretty sure NYSE's ancient creaky FIX gateway is infinitely faster than the NYSE ARCA gateway - as the latter, while more network efficient, isn't going to ever take your packets to NYSE.
A NYSE Speed Bump You Weren't Aware Of https://www.iextrading.com/about/press/op-ed/