A system, apparatus, and method are directed to managing network communications by, in part, reducing a number of packets between a client and a server communicating through another device, such as a traffic management device (TMD). The invention reduces the number of packets communicated, in part, by coalescing acknowledgements (ACKs) and/or finish (FIN) flags into another packet. In one embodiment, if the client provides a substantially complete request for the server, an ACK to the request may be coalesced into a corresponding response from the server. When another request is to be provided to the server, within about half of the minimum retransmission timeout, an ACK to the prior response may be coalesced into a subsequent request to the server. Packet reduction may also be achieved by stretching a packet to insert additional data when the insertion maintains a packet size that is within a negotiated maximum segment size (MSS).