Prioritized connections. It is advantageous to be able to prioritize certain connections such as Telnet connections for manual configuration of the device. Even in a system that is under heavy load from numerous clients, it should be possible to remotely control and configure the device. In order to do provide this, different connection types could be given different priority. For efficiency, such differentiation should be done as far down in the system as possible, preferably in the device driver.
Security aspects. When connecting systems to a network, or even to the global Internet, the security of the system is very important. Identifying levels of security and mechanisms for implementing security for embedded devices is crucial for connecting systems to the global Internet.
Address auto-configuration. If hundreds or even thousands of small embedded devices should be deployed, auto-configuration of IP addresses is advantageous. Such mechanisms already exist in IPv6, the next version of the Internet Protocol, and are currently being standardized for IPv4.
Improving throughput. The throughput degradation problem caused by the poor interaction with the delayed acknowledgment algorithm should be fixed. By increasing the maximum number of in-flight segments from one to two, the problem will not appear. When increasing the amount of in-flight segments, congestion control mechanisms will have to be employed. Those mechanisms are trivial, however, when the upper limit is two simultaneous segments.
Performance enhancing proxy. It might be possible to increase the performance of communication with the embedded devices through the use of a proxy situated near the devices. Such a proxy would have more memory than the devices and could assume responsibility for buffering data.