TACACS

An abbreviation can be broken down to name several things according to the context it is broken down, this article, will not deal with any other context, except for the networking world and in the networking world this term is an acronym for Terminal Access Controller Access Control System. It is basically a remote authentication protocol that is used to communicate with an authentication server, which has the job of authenticating the devices that are connecting to the network and this protocol was commonly used in the UNIX networks for the authentication servers.

The authentication process carried out by this protocol basically looks up to find out that the person or device that is connecting to the network is allowed to do it and whether it is an authorized person. If the authentication process fails then the server don’t allow that particular device or computer to connect to the network. hence, this protocol also helps in providing security for the network. This protocol, TACACS is defined in the RFC 1492, and makes use of the port 49 by default. TACACS was the first version introduced to the world, however, a recent version of this technology is also present, which was introduced by the Cisco System and this newer version is named Extended TACACS or XTACACS.

Due to the release of this later, version the use of the older version has depleted a lot and in the near future the older version would soon become a legacy, as the performance of the later version is far more satisfactory than the first version. Apart from TACACS and XTACACS, another version of the TACACS have also been introduced as the TACACS+ and this version is the latest in the market and is incompatible with the older versions. The major difference between this latest release and the older version is that this newer and latest version is much more efficient and good at what it does and makes use of new and faster algorithm to get the job done in less amount of time.