MP 1,1-5,1 Wifi on mid 2012 Mac Pro 5,1?

[Calab]

I recently moved and I do not have an ethernet connection available for my mid 2012 Mac Pro 5,1. I am able to get online using a USB 3 TPLink adapter in a USB2 port, but it's slow. I'm looking for a better connection. I am running Sequioia 15.5 if that matters. This machine also dual boots with Linux, so working there would be a bonus.

Should I...
... find a PCIe card that provides Wifi 6 connectivity? Any idea which would work?
... add a USB3 card and find a USB3 adapter with Wifi6 connectivity? (possibly the TPLink I'm using now) I do have a card, but no idea if it will work. It also requires a molex power connection that I don't think I have in my Mac Pro.
... find an ethernet to wifi adapter? I've seen wifi extenders that provide an ethernet port. Would that work?

Which of these solutions would work best?

 

[Calab]

Well, my TP-Link Archer TX20U worked, but was flaky. It also did not function in Mint Linux.

I did some digging around in my networking stuff and found a Brotrend Wifi 6 extender. I've plugged that in and connected to it with an ethernet cable. Now I have a stable wifi connection. Speeds are about 365Mbs down and 80Mbs up on a Gigabit/100mbit cable internet connection.

 

[reader50]

Apple hasn't released Intel drivers for WiFi 6, 6e, or 7. Because those versions only shipped in Apple Silicon Macs. There's a community effort underway to port Linux drivers to x86 macOS, but last I checked, they were still stuck at WiFi 5 (802.11 AC) functionality.

So later WiFi PCIe cards are not an option at this time. They'd work in Linux and Windows, but not macOS.

A USB3 adapter might work, but you'd need working drivers for every OS installed.

You've already found the best solution: use an Ethernet connection to a wireless device, so your cMP believes it's connected via gig ethernet. A WiFi extender with ethernet jack is an excellent solution.

My solution was to buy a mesh WiFi 6e system, and place one node beside my cMP. I wanted actual gigabit speeds (or better) on my LAN, to the Time Machine server in the room where my network gear is. So I bought an above-average 6e mesh pair. One that has a couple gig ethernet ports on each node, with the ability to bond the ports (link aggregation).

Our cMPs have dual gig ports, and can aggregate them. My QNAP NAS has dual gig ports too, with link aggregation. So I have a 2Gbps LAN link, with my cMP believing everything is wired. Connection is rock-solid. My Asus mesh node shows a backhaul speed around 3Gbps, so there's plenty of overhead to always keep my 2 Gbps connection running at full speed.