--- Quote Start ---
You can install a RTOS on the NIOS processor if you want - whether you do is up to you.
The best language (C or VHDL) isn't determinable from a latency requirement. You need to do the design on this: take your requirements, work out what you're going to do in hardware and what you're going to do in software, which will be affect by speed and capacity of the FPGA device that you're using. Then write your hardware in VHDL and your software in C.
--- Quote End ---
Not to steal this thread, but I wondered about something. ;) Is there no UDP/IP stack available to use in SoPC-builder, free of charge? And if there is no available, implementing this yourself in VHDL/Verilog is a pain in the **s compared to C/C++?