Explain the concept of distributed architecture and its main characteristics.

Distributed architecture is a model for building software systems where components are located on different physical or virtual machines and interact over a network.

Main characteristics:

• Distribution: components operate on different nodes.
• Scalability: the system can be easily expanded by adding new nodes.
• Fault tolerance: the failure of one node does not lead to the entire system stopping.
• Asynchronous interaction: message exchange between components.
• Independence of components: each node can operate autonomously.

An example can be a microservices architecture, where different services are deployed on separate servers and interact via APIs.