tcpdump(1): Update the NAME section with "other capture devices"

[fxlb]

tcpdump is able to capture on devices that libpcap implements by means other than the OS network stack: e.g. Bluetooth, D-Bus, and USB.

[skip ci]

[guyharris]

"other communications medium"?

[fxlb]

"other communications medium"?

Why not? Any other suggestions?

[fxlb]

"other supported interfaces" ?

[fxlb]

"dump packets on a network or other supported interfaces"?

[guyharris]

The current language speaks of capturing on a "network" rather than on a "device".

If we continue to use "network", we should probably speak of capturing on a communications medium rather than on a device/interface/whatever.

If we speak of capturing on a "device"/"network interface"/whatever, we can speak of capturing on other devices.

It's not clear that tcpdump (or Wireshark or any other capture tool) captures on a "network" - if it's a single network segment, then what it captures is the packed that the adapter is set up to capture and that it can capture (so if you're not capturing in promiscuous mode, or you're on a switched network and not plugged into a sniffer port on the switch, you're not capturing all traffic on the network segment), and you're also not capturing on the entire network (I can't see your traffic to the Internet if I capture on our Wi-Fi network :-)).

So I'm not sure which language is appropriate.

[fxlb]

Good questions.
in DESCRIPTION, we have:
tcpdump prints out a description of the contents of packets on a network interface [...]

[fxlb]

"dump packets on libpcap-supported interfaces and devices"

[fxlb]

"Protocol analyzer"

[infrastation]

Network protocol analyzer.

[infrastation]

Or rather "network packet analyzer" because most of the time tcpdump does not relate different packets together.

[fxlb]

I try to avoid network only e.g. USB.

[infrastation]

There is a number of other archaisms (e.g. all packets on the net will be dumped), this has been improving slowly one word/sentence/paragraph at a time, but obviously needs more work.