This paper presents a network-based traction control system(TCS), where several electric control units(ECUs) are connected by a controller area network(CAN) communication system. The control system consists of four ECUs: the electric throttle controller, the transmission controller, the engine controller and the traction controller. In order to validate the traction control algorithm of the network-based TCS and evaluate its performance, a Hardware-In-the-Loop Simulation(HILS) environment was developed. Herein we propose a new concept of the HILS environment called the network-based HILS(Net-HILS) for the development and validation of network-based control systems which include smart sensors or actuators. In this study, we report that we have designed a network-based TCS, validated its algorithm and evaluated its performance using Net-HILS.