I was hoping that there was a way for a plugin to know what DAW track it's on, similar to the $1 clone ID, but I was told on the plugdata discord that the plugin specs don't support that. Then I thought maybe I could have an ID service running and have each plugin get its ID when it's created, but that doesn't seem to work. I think it has something to do with TCP/IP that I don't understand. Here's the instanceIDService:
And here's the instance:
If I just clone the instance 5 times and run everything outside the DAW, the instanceIDService appears to get 5 ID requests but every instance receives only the first response.

If in REAPER I create 6 tracks, each with a plugdata VST that has loaded "instance.pd", it appears that each instance hears the reply to every subsequent instance ID query. Here's the instance on track 1:

Finally, when I close REAPER, it looks like TCP/IP connections are still open, i.e. [disconnect( was ignored, which is consistent with the previous observation..

Can you help me understand what is going on?
instanceIDService.zip