The normal way of terminating a TCP connection is by using the graceful TCP connection release. This mechanism uses the `FIN` flag of the TCP header and allows each host to release its own direction of data transfer. As for the `SYN` flag, the utilization of the `FIN` flag in the TCP header consumes one sequence number. The figure :ref:`fig-tcprelease` shows the part of the TCP FSM used when a TCP connection is released.