The requirement for flexible operation is becoming increasingly important in many distributed computer control systems. This paper briefly presents the FTT-CAN protocol (Flexible Time-Triggered communication on Controller Area Network) which allows for flexible operation, i.e. dynamic communication requirements, under timeliness guarantees. Then, the paper discusses a particular approach to the global management of such distributed systems named network-centric. This is based on the synchronisation of the distributed tasks in remote nodes with the network traffic. Thus, on-line changes in the rates and/or relative phasing of the network traffic can be automatically applied to the tasks that use it, in all the remote nodes in the distributed system. This approach is fully supported by the FTT-CAN protocol.