USB ethernet and tethering on Android is certainly one way. Keeping the phone powered can present interesting opportunities, but it works well.

There's also other ways.

Like USB tethering. Plug the computer into the Android phone with a regular USB cable that is already kicking around. No ethernet adapter required; the phone behaves as a network adapter in and of itself. The computer keeps the phone charged. This worked at least as far back as the OG Motorola Droid, in 2009. (Drivers may be a fun thing to get working depending on the OS, but that's just a software problem.)

Or: Other hardware that is already laying around. The old home network router that has been hosting generations of spiders for over a decade, in a dusty cardboard box at the back of a closet next to the favorite pair of shoes that are simply too nice to ever get worn? There's a good chance that it's hackable and able to run custom firmware. Stuff a period-correct copy of OpenWRT or DD-WRT or Tomato or [something] into it, and turn it into a wifi client bridge so your old Ethernet stuff can chat on the wifi network. (I've had the big, color HP laser printer at the shop connected this way with a hacked Linksys WRT54G for very nearly two decades so far. Part of me says I should upgrade that box one of these years, but it still works fine and I find this amusing.)

Or: Rube Goldberg minimalism. The Raspberry Pi Zero W that is in the drawer next to the extra key for the Ford that got sold a decade ago (and the spiders; there's always spiders): It runs Linux just fine. It talks wifi. It can talk RNDIS to a USB-connected Windows computer. It can therefore become a wifi-to-usb bridge, wherein the computer doesn't even know that it's talking to a wifi network. Drivers for this are built-ins as far back as XP and are downloadable for windows 9x. (The PC provides the power for the Zero W over the same cable that the data flows over.)

There's lots of ways that many/most of us computer-types can get this done without spending a dime, or ever waiting for a delivery. :)

Drivers may be a fun thing to get working depending on the OS, but that's just a software problem

Android USB tethering uses the RNDIS standard, which I believe goes back to the Windows 95 era, so there's certainly no shortage of driver support.

"Generations of spiders" threw me there, I thought you were talking about web crawlers.