Patent ID: 8671174

Claim:
A method of managing one or more client devices and one or more device managers arranged to communicate with each other in a personal distributed network, said method comprising: receiving, by said one or more device managers, a first hardware attribute set and a first service attribute set of a first client device from the first client device; receiving, by said one or more device managers, a second hardware attribute set and a second service attribute set of a second client device from the second client device; allocating, by said one or more device managers, a first service component of a first service to the first client device based on the first service attribute set of the first client device corresponding to the first service component; allocating by said one or more device managers, a second service component of the first service to the second client device based on the second service attribute set of the second client device corresponding to the second service component; and communicating with at least one of said one or more device managers, the first client device or at least one of a non-primary device manager, a non-primary client device, wherein said one or more device managers and the first and second client devices are each classified as at least one of a primary device, a secondary device, or a universal device according to capabilities of at least one of the hardware or service functionalities of the first and second client devices and when the classification of said one or more device managers differs from the classification of the first or second client device, the communication and capabilities of said one or more device managers or the differently classified client device is restricted to a subset of the corresponding capabilities for at least one of storage capabilities or receiving a set of the first or second client device attributes.