Methods, and associated devices, media, and systems, for establishing a communication link between a host system and a storage device are provided. Such a method includes the steps of: providing a communication stack having only an application layer and a physical layer; and establishing a communication channel between a host system and the storage device using the communication stack. The step of establishing may be performed via a TCP/IP emulator in a host-system side and a storage-command interpreter in a storage-device side. The method may further include: establishing a communication channel between the host system and a device having a static-IP address; and establishing a communication channel between the host system and a device having a storage identifier that is embedded into one of command parameters sent by the application layer or the physical layer to the TCP/IP emulator.