T

Terminal Access Controller Access Control System. Often run on UNIX systems, the TACAS+ protocol provides access control for routers, network access servers, and other networked computing devices via one or more centralized servers. TACACS+ provides separate authentication, authorization, and accounting services. User passwords are administered in a central database rather than in individual routers, providing easily scalable network security solutions.

You identify packets as belonging to the same tagged VLAN by putting a value into the 12-bit (4 octet) VLAN ID field that is part of the IEEE 802.1Q field of the header. Using this 12-bit field, you can configure up to 4096 individual VLAN addresses (usually some are reserved for system VLANs such as management and default VLANs); these tagged VLANs can exist across multiple devices. The tagged VLAN can be associated with both tagged and untagged ports.

Topology change notification. The TCN is a timer used in RSTP that signals a change in the topology of the network.

Transmission Control Protocol. Together with Internet Protocol (IP), TCP is one of the core protocols underlying the Internet. The two protocols are usually referred to as a group, by the term TCP/IP. TCP provides a reliable connection, which means that each end of the session is guaranteed to receive all of the data transmitted by the other end of the connection, in the same order that it was originally transmitted without receiving duplicates.

Trivial File Transfer Protocol. TFTP is an Internet utility used to transfer files, which does not provide security or directory listing. It relies on UDP.

Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) is an enhancement to the WEP encryption technique that uses a set of algorithms that rotates the session keys. The protocol's enhanced encryption includes a per-packet key mixing function, a message integrity check (MIC), an extended initialization vector (IV) with sequencing rules, and a re-keying mechanism. The encryption keys are changed (re-keyed) automatically and authenticated between devices after the re-key interval (either a specified period of time, or after a specified number of packets has been transmitted).

Transport Layer Security. See SSL

ToS (Type of Service) / DSCP (Diffserv Codepoint). The ToS/DSCP box contained in the IP header of a frame is used by applications to indicate the priority and Quality of Service for each frame. The level of service is determined by a set of service parameters which provide a three way trade-off between low-delay, high-reliability, and high-throughput. The use of service parameters may increase the cost of service.

In EAPS, the transit node is a switch, or node, that is not designated a master in the EAPS domain ring.

A repository containing trusted certificates, used to validate an incoming certificate. A truststore usually contains CA certificates, which represent certificate authorities that are trusted to sign certificates, and can also contain copies of server or client certificates that are to be trusted when seen.

Transition Security Network. A subset of Robust Security Network (RSN), which provides an enhanced security solution for legacy hardware. The Wi-Fi Alliance has adopted a solution called Wireless Protected Access (WPA), based on TSN. RSN and TSN both specify IEEE 802.1x authentication with Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP).

Time-Sensitive Networking. Standards under development by the Time-Sensitive Networking task group of the IEEE 802.1 working group. There are various characteristics of TSN, including packet preemption, prioritized packet queuing, congestion control, bandwidth reservation, and transmit latency determination used to guarantee that data packets always arrive within a certain predetermined window of time.

Tunnelling (or encapsulation) is a technology that enables one network to send its data via another network's connections. Tunnelling works by encapsulating packets of a network protocol within packets carried by the second network. The receiving device then decapsulates the packets and forwards them in their original format.