1. A method for managing applications in a network node that has a distributed architecture comprising: within a network node comprising: a first independent computer system having a processing unit, an operating system, and a first version of an application; a second independent computer system having a processing unit, an operating system, and a second version of the application, wherein the first version of the application is different from the second version of the application; and a switch fabric that provides data paths between the first and second independent computer systems; associating version compatibility information with interprocess communications (IPC) message structures to generate IPC protocol information that includes an association between the version compatibility information and the IPC message structures such that a particular IPC message structure has a corresponding set of different versions of the application with which the particular IPC message structure is compatible; and utilizing the IPC protocol information to identify the IPC message structures that are used in communications between the application, wherein the communications are between the first version of the application that resides on the first independent computer system and the second version of the application that resides on the second independent computer system.