The decision to not support device indirection in those instructions wasn't arbitrary. It was due to the fact that these client instructions adapt to the device's needs...internal Ethernet vs ECOM100 vs internal serial vs SERIO vs unknown future device. With a reference, we don't know what the device actually is until runtime...hence...we don't know which flavor to encode. We understood the need, but there were other issues.
I will look into the dead socket issue again. We have a maintenance release due in a couple of weeks. Maybe I can get something worked out.
In the meantime, PING will let you test the connection prior to establishing it.