according to principles of the invention , a distributed data processing system having a host computer coupled by way of a network to one or more peripheral devices is presented . in part , this distributed data processing system has advantages over current technologies because executables run on a host device can also be downloaded and executed on a target peripheral device . the virtual machine instruction processor located in the host machine and the peripheral device run the same instruction set and therefore readily share executables . this capability opens up robust communication between the peripheral device and the host machine and sophisticated peripheral device management and administration .