tcpdump prints a description of the contents of packets on a network interface which match a given boolean expression. It can also be run with the -w flag, which causes it to save the packet data to a file for later analysis, and/or with the -r flag, which causes it to read from a saved packet file rather than to read packets from a network interface. In all cases, only packets which match the expression will be processed by tcpdump. tcpdump logs more than just TCP, IP, or ethernet packets, but has a whole suite of decoders, including ones for USB.
