Peer-reviewed

In this paper we present a proposal of the architecture for a system which allows the deployment of services in a group of computers, connected in a peer-to-peer fashion. This architecture is divided in layers, and each of them contains some components which offer specific functions. By putting them together, we obtain a system with desirable characteristics such as scalability, decentralization, ability to deal with heterogeneity, fault tolerance, load-balancing, and self-* properties.