Equipment monitoring employing time-triggered Ethernet communications is provided. Two or more sensor assemblies can be configured to transmit sensor signals representative of one or more operating parameters of a machine to a monitoring system over a token ring Ethernet network. The monitoring system can synchronize timing between the sensor assemblies and schedule timing of respective sensor signal transmissions to bound latency of the scheduled transmissions. Alternatively, or additionally, the monitoring system can include an Ethernet backplane configured to allow Ethernet communication between two or more processing cards coupled thereto. A switch in communication with the Ethernet backplane can schedule transmissions between the processing cards coupled to the Ethernet backplane to guarantee latency of the scheduled transmissions.