The original TACACS, developed in the early ARPANet days, had very limited functionality and used the UDP transport. In the early 1990s, the protocol was extended to include additional functionality and the transport changed to TCP.

TACACS is defined in RFC 1492, and uses (either TCP or UDP) port 49 by default. TACACS allows a client to accept a username and password and send a query to a TACACS authentication server, sometimes called a TACACS daemon or simply TACACSD. TACACSD uses TCP and usually runs on port 49. It would determine whether to accept or deny the authentication request and send a response back.

TACACS+

TACACS+ and RADIUS have generally replaced TACACS and XTACACS in more recently built or updated networks. TACACS+ is an entirely new protocol and is not compatible with TACACS or XTACACS. TACACS+ uses the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and RADIUS uses the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). Since TCP is connection oriented protocol, TACACS+ does not have to implement transmission control. RADIUS, however, does have to detect and correct transmission errors like packet loss, timeout etc. since it rides on UDP which is connectionless.

RADIUS encrypts only the users' password as it travels from the RADIUS client to RADIUS server. All other information such as the username, authorization, accounting are transmitted in clear text. Therefore it is vulnerable to different types of attacks. TACACS+ encrypts all the information mentioned above and therefore does not have the vulnerabilities present in the RADIUS protocol.

RADIUS and TACACS + are client/ server protocols, which means the server portion cannot send unsolicited commands to the client portion. The server portion can only speak when spoken to. Diameter is a peer-based protocol that allows either end to initiate communication. This functionality allows the Diameter server to send a message to the access server to request the user to provide another authentication credential if she is attempting to access a secure resource.

Reference(s) used for this question:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACACS

and

Harris, Shon (2012-10-18). CISSP All-in-One Exam Guide, 6th Edition (p. 239). McGraw-Hill. Kindle Edition.