Abstract: A network, a particularly on board of an aircraft, such as a cabin network or a cargo bay network, comprises at least one central signaling backbone, a plurality of distributed sensor nodes connected to the central signaling backbone, and a plurality of network devices connected to the central signaling backbone. Each of the plurality of distributed sensor nodes includes one or more sensors configured to gather sensor measurement values and to route the gathered sensor measurement values over the central signaling backbone. Each of the plurality of network devices is configured to send a sensor control signal to one or more of the plurality of distributed sensor nodes, the sensor control signal triggering the receiving sensor node to send selected sensor measurement values over the central signaling backbone to the sending network devices based on the content of the sent sensor control signal.