That is one explanation. I've worked in avionics telemetry & remote sensor fusion and there is actually a push to go from synchronous archs (using PCM on I2C buses) towards modular and networked archs (using some variant of IP/etc. protocols).

Problem is you need a reference time clock. On monolithic arch, is easy : the backbone bus timestamp the paquets it sees. On networked arch you need a time server a la NTP, otherwise you have time skew and loopbacks.

Even with a accurate time clock, you may also need to correct for timing issues due to cable length.