Simple Ethernet port.

Well, I'm not finding it easy but easy was what I was after. It really depends on your skill set, what your near term and long term target goals are and how much you can invest in it.

Don't get discouraged, no matter where you go they're all the same. These are excellent capabilities to have and will make your career bloom but its not easy!

Now reading the advertising and tutorial literature does not prepare you for what's in store. On the hardware side it can be relatively simple if you only want to use what they give you in the tutorials. Going beyond those to customizing for particular project use can be quite an awakening.

Don't get discouraged! Remember they're nearly all the same.

For hardware I quickly discovered that you really do need to read Volumes 4 and 5 of the Quartus II Handbook. That is discouraging especially when, as a hardware engineer, you discover you'll have to learn to write software just to be able to simulate your designs. Also the SOPC Builder is buggy, it has its own tendencies to hang or crash at odd times. Apparently its all created by the use of script files and seems to be cobbled together. When you read that some of its outputs are written to .html files (yet those files aren't for putting on the web) it seems clear that they just hired a bunch of students to put it together cheaply.

Still don't get discouraged, it can be used to design an embedded system on an FPGA.

Do make sure your understanding of just how to properly assemble a basic microprocessor based system is good enough. I have to blow two plus decades of dust off mine.

Now as to ethernet capability. This is a technology, outside the basic microprocessor system, that has evolved to require one to run it. If your just going to use a NIOS development board and its on board MAC chip you should be fine. The SOPC has the connection for that and the tutorials will get you there. If your going to use an IP instead then read up on it and gain an understanding of just how it works.

As to the iNicheStack, well that's software. This is where the tutorials and the supporting software tools begin to branch away from each other. The tutorials all use the IDE but if you read the beginning of the "Embedded Design Handbook" you'll see that the IDE is about to go away. The problem is what will be left is not for the beginner, that too is stated in the beginning of the "Embedded Design Handbook".

Again don't be discouraged.

When you read the tutorial on the iNicheStack it does state clearly that modifying it requires a good knowledge of Sockets. I don't have that myself, yet, and if you're going to use it as given you should be fine. If you need to modify it then you'll need to find yourself some good books on the subject. I don't have any suggestions toward this yet.

Now as to UCOSII, well now you're looking at a different career. At this point now you are becoming an Embedded Systems Programmer, a carreer very different from an FPGA designer/Hardware Engineer. This follows well the replacement tool set for the IDE but this entire system is not for the beginner. You have a huge amount of reading and learning to do.

I still say don't be discouraged! If you gain a good understanding of the above you'll do well in your career. If you master any one of them you'll be made for life!

Good Luck!