A vehicle and method for intra-vehicle communication within the vehicle involve a sending controller to transmit a message, and a receiving controller to receive the message. The vehicle includes one or more switches to relay the message from the sending controller to the receiving controller. The sending controller and each of the one or more switches include an egress port for transmission of the message. A processor performs bounded timing analysis to determine a total wait time during transmission of the message from the sending controller to the receiving controller as a sum of each egress port wait time at each egress port encountered by the message. Action is taken to avoid or mitigate the total wait time during transmission exceeding a deadline for the message, and the bounded timing analysis includes performing an iterative process and determining a lower bound (LB), an upper bound (UB), and a median value.