In order to integrate a large number of distributed energy resources in distribution grids a robust decentralized information and communication control structure is required. This paper proposes an overlay peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture for controlling and monitoring microgrids in real time, which has a great capacity of adaptation to the demanding network requirements of these environments. The proposed concept has been implemented and experimentally tested on a microgrid. Real data analysis demonstrates that the system meets with the network performance parameters proposed for microgrids, such as latency and bandwidth, showing that peer-to-peer overlay networks are useful for energy grids in practice.