I would suggest you get hands-on with NetFPGA[1]. Parallel to NetFPGA[1], please refer to the networking projects which have been done by Stanford[2][3] students. They have actually reproduced research from many networking related seminal papers. What they are doing is highly commendable. You could find one or two Networking + FPGA related projects there.

It's easier said than done since I've been grappling myself with this for quite some time, but doing this will take you at an altogether different level.

[1] → https://netfpga.org/site/#/

[2] → http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs244/

[3] → https://reproducingnetworkresearch.wordpress.com/