What you know about uP or uC.

If you know what is microprocessor and have some hand-on experience and knows about LAN structure, then it would be relatively easier, though your project does not sound so simple.

If you never experienced using uP or uC then it may take you little while to first learn uP before you really implement it to your project.

If you want to learn uP then to me, 8051/52 is the easiest to use as you will have enormous help from this site as well as from thousands of websites and books says many ways to use this uP.

Rauf