I have made some tests with several devices and what I can say is the following.
A W8 device and a WP8 device can only communicate if the 2 devices are NFC capable.
Indeed, Peer Browsing is not supported between W8 et WP8 (according to my tests). But once the NFC connection established the W8 and the WP8 can keep the connection using Bluetooth so the NFC connector can be released (NFC does not support multiple simultaneous connections).
You can keep several live connections between a W8 device and other devices (W8, WP8).
What I achieve to do is:
- 1 W8 (NFC) tablet hosting connections.
- 1 W8 PC (without NFC) that connects to the W8 tablet using Peer Browsing (Direct Wifi).
- 2 WP8 connecting to the W8 tablet using NFC and Bluetooth.
The hosting device can keep a socket per connected device. You just need to manage all the sockets to receive and send data.