I don't know about open IP, but it would be fairly straightforward but not trivial. Knowing verilog would be required, though, but it can be learned from a digital design book [1]. From there, you would probably want some experience in using the tools. For example, for Xilinx FPGAs, you could run through the Vivado tutorials. Then to design the IP you would design the state machines and logic to take data from one ethernet controller (for example, the Xilinx ethernet MAC [2]) and send it to another. The actual verilog would not be especially complex, however interfacing with the ethernet controllers and other peripherals would take some time.